Random Jottings

ORA-29701 when calling System.Data.OracleClient.OracleLob.Write

2009-07-17T08:36:00.001+01:00

I recently experienced some unhandled errors when attempting to install a custom module in a DotNetNuke site that had an Oracle back end. The DB provider I was using was AcuitiDB.

After some debugging, I was able to establish that the error was being raised from a call to AddDesktopModule, and the StackTrace showed that it was originating in a call to System.Data.OracleClient.OracleLob.Write:

[OracleException (0x80131938): ORA-29701: unable to connect to Cluster Manager

]

   System.Data.OracleClient.OracleConnection.CheckError(OciErrorHandle errorHandle, Int32 rc) +304889

   System.Data.OracleClient.OracleLob.Write(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count) +587

   DotNetNuke.Data.OracleSqlHelper.CreateClobParameter(String ConnectionString, String ParameterName, String p) +229

I contacted Sanjay Mehrota at Acuiti and he was very helpful in assisting me to track down the cause of this. Firstly, he suggested that I try some other areas of the site that created clobs, such as the text/html module. This exhibited the same error. He also provided some test code for creating a temporary clob which I added to a simple console app as a test harness. This initially appeared to work correctly, but when I increased the size of the string being used to around 29,000 bytes, I got the same error. It transpires that Temporary clobs are created in the temporary tablespace and that owing to some other testing work that was being performed on the DB, we had run out of tablespace. I got the DBA to increase the size of the temporary tablespace and the problem disappeared.

Asp.Net Bundle from TypeMock

2009-05-19T08:39:00.001+01:00

Unit Testing ASP.NET? ASP.NET unit testing has never been this easy.
Typemock is launching a new product for ASP.NET developers – the ASP.NET Bundle - and for the launch will be giving out FREE licenses to bloggers and their readers.
The ASP.NET Bundle is the ultimate ASP.NET unit testing solution, and offers both Typemock Isolator, a unit test tool and Ivonna, the Isolator add-on for ASP.NET unit testing, for a bargain price.
Typemock Isolator is a leading .NET unit testing tool (C# and VB.NET) for many ‘hard to test’ technologies such as SharePoint, ASP.NET, MVC, WCF, WPF, Silverlight and more. Note that for unit testing Silverlight there is an open source Isolator add-on called SilverUnit.
The first 60 bloggers who will blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Free Isolator ASP.NET Bundle license (Typemock Isolator + Ivonna). If you post this in an ASP.NET dedicated blog, you'll get a license automatically (even if more than 60 submit) during the first week of this announcement.
Also 8 bloggers will get an additional 2 licenses (each) to give away to their readers / friends.
Go ahead, click the following link for more information on how to get your free license.

Must add this to my blog..

2008-09-02T00:06:00.001+01:00

Javascript code prettifier

Writing to Event log with ASP.Net and Enterprise Library

2008-08-07T13:18:00.001+01:00

I recently had a problem writing to the event log from my application. I had configured the application to use the Logging Application Block from the 3.1 version of the Microsoft Enterprise Library and followed the walk-through in the documentation to log exceptions to the Application Log, but nothing was appearing.

I had amended the code so that it always through an exception on clicking a test button, and stepping through the code, I could see that Log.Write was being called and no error was raised from this call.

A quick search on Google suggested that this was a permissions issue for the ASP.Net account, so I added the following key:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\Application\<my app name>

I granted full control to the ASPNET account to this key and amended the source property of my trace listener to <my app name> using the Enterprise Library Configuration Manager.

I now get events recorded in the Application log and their source is set to <my app name> so it is easy to filter them for the events I want.

Code Access Security For Child AppDomain

2008-03-04T17:23:00.003Z

I recently configured an existing application to use ClickOnce deployment. All seemed to go well until I tried to run the application, whereupon it threw an exception on a line that had previously been working perfectly:

            AppDomain childDomain;
            childDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain(ChildAppDomainName);
 
            //Following line throws exception
            childDomain.UnhandledException += new UnhandledExceptionEventHandler(UnhandledExceptionHandler);

The exception was:

{"Request for the permission of type 'System.Security.Permissions.ReflectionPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed."}

The application was configured to run as FullTrust. To cut a long and frustrating story short, It turned out that the security settings were not being propagated to the child AppDomain. I changed the code to the following:

            AppDomain childDomain;
 
            Evidence baseEvidence = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.Evidence;
            Evidence childEvidence = new Evidence(baseEvidence);
 
            childDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain(ChildAppDomainName, childEvidence, AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation);

This allowed the child AppDomain to inherit the settings from the parent domain and everything worked as expected once more.

Check for existence of DB objects

2008-02-29T12:18:00.002Z

Some queries I find useful to add before the Create/Alter Statements in SQL Server.

--Constraints
IF EXISTS(
SELECT NULL FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Constraint_column_usage
where table_name ='MyTable'
and constraint_name = 'FK_COl1')

--Check existence of stored_proc
IF EXISTS (SELECT NULL
FROM information_schema.routines r
WHERE r.specific_schema = 'dbo'
AND r.specific_name = 'MyProc')
--Check column exists
IF NOT EXISTS (
SELECT NULL
FROM information_schema.columns
where column_name='Col1'
AND table_name ='MyTable'
and table_schema='dbo')

--Check for description
IF not EXISTS(
SELECT NULL from sys.all_objects ao
INNER JOIN sys.extended_properties ep on ao.object_id = ep.major_id and ep.name ='MS_Description'
where ao.name ='FK_key_name')

Disable full screen video on Dual monitor setup

2008-01-25T16:48:00.000Z

I was recently trying to debug an application that hosts a windows media player control and I wanted the application to run full screen on my primary display with my Visual Studio IDE on the secondary display. Annoyingly, although the application appeared on my primary display as expected, the secondary display had a full screen video output. There appears to be nothing in the media player API to prevent this. It turns out that you need to change your driver display settings to prevent this. These settings are driver specific, for mine I needed to do:

Bring up display properties from control panel
Click Settings
Click Advanced
Click Quadro NVS 120 M (Nvidia specific)
Click Start NVidia control panel
Click Video and Television
Click Modify full screen options
Set "When watching video content" to Only show it in my viewing application

Soap Extensions in web forms client

2008-01-03T09:13:00.000Z

On my current project, I need to consume a web service from a Windows Client, the web service is decorated with a custom attribute on the server side that causes the SOAP message to be compressed, this code was written by another developer but I think he got it from here. In order to uncompress it on the client, I needed to reference the assembly that contained the SoapExtension in my client and add the following section to the app.config:

    <system.web>
        <webServices>
            <soapExtensionTypes>
 
                <add type="myCompany.myProject.WebServices.SoapExtensions.CompressionExtension,myCompany.myProject.CompressionExtensionLib"
                priority="3" group="High" />
            soapExtensionTypes>
        webServices>
    system.web>

The first part of the type is the fully qualified class name, the second part is the namespace.

Another "What type of person are you ?" survey

2007-12-11T00:49:00.000Z

XMLSerialization with multiple XMLRoot attributes

2007-12-07T16:32:00.000Z

I recently had to construct an object hierarchy in order to produce an xml config file for a third party application. A lot of the config file could be constructed from boiler plate xml, so I needed a way to load in sections. The section I wanted to load was for a config element which occurs someway down the heirarchy:

sometag
core
object_definitions
object_type type="myType" plugin="myPlugin"
config
moretags
moretags
moretags
config
object_type
sometag
[Haven't worked out how to escape tags quickly, so I've stripped the brackets]
The following code shows how I created a static method in my config class to load this.

/// 
   /// Allows definition of all UI properties
   /// 
   [Serializable]
   [XmlRoot("config")]
   public class ConfigureUIObjectConfig : ObjectConfigBase
   {
       public static ConfigureUIObjectConfig LoadUIConfig(string filePath)
       {
           System.IO.StreamReader sr=null;
           ConfigureUIObjectConfig conf;
           try
           {

               XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(ConfigObjects.ObjectTypes.ConfigureUIObjectConfig));

               sr = new System.IO.StreamReader(filePath);
               conf = (ConfigureUIObjectConfig)xs.Deserialize(sr);
           }
           catch (Exception)
           {
               throw;
           }
           finally
           {
               if (sr!=null)
                   sr.Close();
           }

           return conf;
       }

I invoke it from what is normally the root class in my hierarchy in the constructor:

      public ConfigFile()
       {
           //Add default object types
           ConfigureUIObjectConfig uiConf = new ConfigureUIObjectConfig();
           ObjectType obj = new ObjectType();
           //obj.Config = uiConf;
           obj.Config = ConfigureUIObjectConfig.LoadUIConfig("DefaultUIConfig.xml");//uiConf;
           obj.Plugin = "UiConfiguratorPlugin";
           obj.Type = "ConfigureUI";
           this.Core.ObjectDefinitions.ObjectTypes.Add( obj);

       }

The key to getting this to work is to decorate the ConfigureUIObjectConfig class with the [XmlRoot("config")] attribute. If you do not do this you will get an exception:

System.InvalidOperationException: <config xmlns=''> was not expected.

This eluded me at first as I assumed that I could only mark one class with the XmlRoot attribute, however, it appears that this does not matter in this instance.

Typed DataSet NullValue behaviour

2007-10-17T13:44:00.000+01:00

The default value for NullBehaviour in a typed DataSet in Visual Studio 2005 is to throw an exception. I recently needed to change this in a dataset containing 50 tables. Rather than edit it manually I edited the .xsd file using xml Notepad. I found a post on MSDN that indicated what needed changing:

msprop:nullValue="_empty" -- (Empty)

msprop:nullValue="_null" -- (Nothing)

msprop:nullValue="_throw" -- (Throw exception)

msprop:nullValue="_throw" is the default value and it is not persisted by default.

The xpath queries I used were:

--Find string columns with no null value prop
/xs:schema/xs:element/xs:complexType/xs:choice/xs:element/xs:complexType/xs:sequence/xs:element[(child::xs:simpleType/xs:restriction/@base='xs:string') and (not(@msprop:nullValue))]

and

--Find nodes where value exists and is not '_empty'

xs:schema/xs:element/xs:complexType/xs:choice/xs:element/xs:complexType/xs:sequence/xs:element[xs:simpleType/xs:restriction/@base='xs:string']/@msprop:nullValue[.!='_empty']

Conditional build events

2007-09-12T14:53:00.000+01:00

In my current C# interop project, I unregister the existing COM dll using a pre-build event:

regasm /u $(TargetPath)

However, this fails if the file is not present (after a clean), so I use the following command to only unregister it if it is present.

path= $(TargetDir) for %f in ($(TargetFileName)) do C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\RegAsm.exe /u %f

Exposing COM events from .Net to Javascript in web browser

2007-09-12T09:53:00.000+01:00

A lot has already been written about this so I won't repeat all the details here. These two links give a good guide to how to do it.

COM Interop Exposed - Part 2
HOW TO: Sink Managed C# Events in Internet Explorer Script

This post is about troubleshooting some common mistakes that may occur. The key thing to note is that if you fail to follow the steps listed in these articles:

you will NOT get a compile time error
you will NOT get an error when registering the component
you will NOT get an error at runtime when you attach the event handler.

Mistakes that I made were:

Did not put a Dispid attribute on the methods in my event interface.
Had name mismatches between the events in my main class and the method names in my interface.

I'll add some test code here later.

COM component not registering properly

2007-09-07T22:14:00.000+01:00

Related to my previous post, I was also having trouble getting the new .net COM object to register properly, even when I had removed all references to earlier versions. I had used:

>RegAsm assemblyName

but was unable to invoke the component in a web page. When I tried to examine it in OleView it initially seemed to be fine. However, when I tried to expand the class name node (under .Net category) I got the following error:

CoGetClassObject failed.
The system cannot find the file specified.

severity: SEVERITY_ERROR, facility: FACILITY_WIN32 ($80070002)

Registering it with:

>RegAsm assemblyName /codebase

fixed the issue

Regasm /u not working

2007-09-07T22:00:00.000+01:00

I had a strange problem when trying to unregister a COM visible .Net component recently. I had built and registered several versions but when I tried to unregister them I could still see them listed when using OleView. It turns out that the command:

RegAsm /u assemblyName

will only remove the entries that match the version number of your assembly. If you have been incrementing the version number of your component and registering the new one without unregistering the previous version then you will end up with entries for each version. To clear them out you can just set the version number of the assembly, compile it and then unregister it with RegAsm. Do this for each version that you need to unregister.

What card are you?

2007-07-23T08:31:00.000+01:00

You are The Hierophant

Divine Wisdom. Manifestation. Explanation. Teaching.

All things relating to education, patience, help from superiors.The Hierophant is often considered to be a Guardian Angel.

The Hierophant's purpose is to bring the spiritual down to Earth. Where the High Priestess between her two pillars deals with realms beyond this Earth, the Hierophant (or High Priest) deals with worldly problems. He is well suited to do this because he strives to create harmony and peace in the midst of a crisis. The Hierophant's only problem is that he can be stubborn and hidebound. At his best, he is wise and soothing, at his worst, he is an unbending traditionalist.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

2007-05-22T10:09:00.000+01:00

Nice post at A very British Dude on the evils of socialism. Has this youTube video on the evils of communism:

Golden compass

2007-05-14T23:52:00.000+01:00

There is a promotion site for the forthcoming film The Golden Compass which is the american name for the book The Northern Lights, the first in Philip Pullman's trilogy "His Dark Materials". They have a short personality test there which then assigns you a Daemon. You can then email a link to it to let your friends answer the same questions about you and see if your Daemon changes. Mine was initially a chimpanzee so I'll email a few people and see if it changes..

Michael Howard vs Alastair Campbell

2007-05-13T22:44:00.000+01:00

Via Chicken Yoghurt:

Ask Tom "Avoiding overlap values..."

2007-05-11T15:27:00.000+01:00

Nice check for overlapping values in Oracle

Ask Tom "Avoiding overlap values..."

Prescient

2007-05-10T12:21:00.000+01:00

The following passage is from the introduction of the Rapstone Chronicles by John Mortimer:

The discovery that has struck the Titmuss philosopy and left it badly holed is that caring for the environment is quite inconsistent with the free-market economy. Green and true-blue are colours that don't, unfortunately, mix. Preserving the countryside, protecting the woodlands, concern for the ozone layer, all demand levels of government intervention unthinkable in the heady days of victory over the miners and the Falklands War. The high spring of laissez-faire economics is over, the bloom is gone and, such is the nature of politics, with the bloom goes Titmuss.

Who will take his place? It seems likely that Conservatism in the Titmuss mould is now out of style, and his successors may be those prepared to revert to the old consensus days of Butler and Harold Wilson. But what of the left? If free-market Toryism has taken a beating it's as nothing to what recent events in Europe have done to the dreams of the Reverend Simcox. The Labour Party seems to have achieved its huge rise in the opinion polls by freeing itself from what are seen as the tentacles of a Socialist octupus. So what is the new, up-and-coming Labour M.P. going to be like? No doubt he will have extinguished the dear old Trades Union dinosaur. Unquestionably he will be outspoken, quick-witted, with a talent for P.R. and a complete freedom from class distinctions. He will, of course, be wearing a blue suit with a discreet tie, own a car phone and a word processor and believe in free enterprise in a mixed economy. Is the stage set, after the next election, for the emergence of the first Labour Titmuss? Whatever happens, of one thing there is no doubt, British politics will remain a fertile ground for comedy.

John Mortimer 1991

Shameful

2007-04-10T21:21:00.000+01:00

In the end, every great power is as great as its credibility, and the only consolation after these last two weeks is that Britain doesn't have much more left to lose.

Ouch. I tried to convince myself that the decision to allow the 15 to give interviews was part of a cunning strategy. Then I saw this post. I am utterly appalled.

2007-04-09T23:14:00.000+01:00

Goodbye Magna Carta article in the Times about the ridiculous anti protest legislation brought in by this government. I was rather ashamed to read the following:

Twenty miles from London, along the Thames, you will find a field opposite an island in the river. The field contains a monument erected by the American Bar Association. In the field next to it there is a memorial garden to John F Kennedy commemorating his role in the civil rights movement. Why on earth, you may imagine, are there American monuments in fields by the Thames? There are no other monuments. There is nothing to commemorate anything British.

Perhaps an important figure in American history was born there? Nope. The site is far more important to the American people than that. On that unmarked island in 1215 something was written down that more than 500 years later became the fifth amendment of the American Bill of Rights. “No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned . . . or in any other way destroyed . . . except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice.”

Contrast this with the way we seem to have taken it for granted and allowed our freedoms to be eroded. At least the guys mentioned in the article are doing something about it.

2007-04-03T13:17:00.000+01:00

Your Personality Profile

You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant.
Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle.
You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs.

For you, comfort and calm are very important.
You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection.
You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong.

The World's Shortest Personality Test

Too kind, no,really..

My first question on asktom

2007-04-03T11:59:00.000+01:00

Yay! My first question has been answered on asktom.

2007-03-26T23:26:00.000+01:00

A common requirement when importing data into a table is to log any errors which occur due to constraint violation. This often leads to people processing data in a Cursor FOR LOOP and doing one insert at a time so that they can catch and log the error:

BEGIN
FOR source_rec IN (SELECT * FROM all_objects a)
LOOP
BEGIN
INSERT INTO t1
(col1
,col2
,col3)
VALUES
(source_rec.owner
,source_rec.object_name
,source_rec.subobject_name);
EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS THEN
--log error using PLVISION
plvexc.recngo;
END;
END LOOP;
END;

Another option is to use the EXCEPTIONS INTO clause of ENABLE constraint:
DECLARE
l_exc_count INTEGER;
BEGIN
--Disable unique constraint
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'ALTER TABLE t1 DISABLE CONSTRAINT UNQ_CONST1';
--Copy data (inc duplicates) from source table
INSERT INTO t1 (SELECT * FROM t2);
--The EXCEPTIONS table can be created using $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/utlexcpt.sql.
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'ALTER TABLE t1 ENABLE CONSTRAINT UNQ_CONST1 EXCEPTIONS INTO EXCEPTIONS';
--If constraint is violated it will still be disabled at this point
SELECT COUNT(1) INTO l_exc_count FROM t3;
IF l_exc_count > 0
THEN
--Copy invalid rows to errors table
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'CREATE TABLE errors_tab as SELECT * FROM t1,exceptions e where t1.rowid=e.row_id';

DELETE FROM t1
WHERE ROWID IN (SELECT minrid
FROM (SELECT object_id
,MIN(e.row_id) minrid
FROM EXCEPTIONS e
,t_dups t
WHERE t.ROWID = e.row_id
GROUP BY object_id));
END IF;
END;

Cool new feature in Oracle 10gR2 is the LOG ERRORS clause

Comment at asktom had the following:

insert /*+ APPEND */ into t select * from t2
LOG ERRORS REJECT LIMIT UNLIMITED;

Further details here

The Devil's Kitchen: 50 Reasons Why The Independent Hasn't Got A Clue

2007-03-22T13:10:00.000Z

Devil's Kitchen gives a thorough fisking of the Independent's article "50 reasons to love the EU"

The Devil's Kitchen: 50 Reasons Why The Independent Hasn't Got A Clue

I particularly like number 28

Record Exists

2007-03-16T10:05:00.000Z

Copied from some tips put together by Chris Rudd, ultimately sourced from Steven Feuerstein
/*
Note that the following shows three ways of checking if a record exists which have very similar response times, one way (implicit cursor) which is bad, and a fifth way
( select count(*) ) which is a VERY BAD THING and will result in broken fingers for anyone found using it!
*/
SET VERIFY OFF
@ssoo
DECLARE
/* Different approaches to answering "at least one?" */
CURSOR empcur
IS
SELECT employee_id
FROM employee_big WHERE department_id = &&secondparm;
v NUMBER;
b BOOLEAN;
BEGIN
plvtmr.set_factor (&&firstparm);
plvtmr.capture;
FOR i IN 1 .. &&firstparm
LOOP
BEGIN
SELECT employee_id INTO v FROM employee_big
WHERE department_id = &&secondparm;
b := TRUE;
EXCEPTION
WHEN NO_DATA_FOUND THEN b := FALSE;
WHEN TOO_MANY_ROWS THEN b := TRUE;
END;
END LOOP;
PLVtmr.show_elapsed ('Implicit');

plvtmr.capture;
FOR i IN 1 .. &&firstparm
LOOP
OPEN empcur;
FETCH empcur INTO v;
b := empcur%FOUND;
CLOSE empcur;
END LOOP;
PLVtmr.show_elapsed ('Explicit');

plvtmr.capture;
FOR i IN 1 .. &&firstparm
LOOP
SELECT COUNT(*) INTO v
FROM employee_big WHERE department_id = &&secondparm;
b := v > 0;
END LOOP;
PLVtmr.show_elapsed ('COUNT');

/* Ohio OUG Contributions.... */
plvtmr.capture;
FOR i IN 1 .. &&firstparm
LOOP
SELECT COUNT(1) INTO v
FROM employee_big WHERE department_id = &&secondparm
AND ROWNUM <> 0;
END LOOP;
PLVtmr.show_elapsed ('COUNT ROWNUM<2'); department_id =" &&secondparm);"> @atleastone 1000 20
Implicit Elapsed: .45 seconds. Factored: .00045 seconds.
Explicit Elapsed: .12 seconds. Factored: .00012 seconds.
COUNT Elapsed: 2.21 seconds. Factored: .00221 seconds.
COUNT ROWNUM<2> @atleastone 20000 20
Implicit Elapsed: 8.06 seconds. Factored: .0004 seconds.
Explicit Elapsed: 2.46 seconds. Factored: .00012 seconds.
COUNT Elapsed: 42.21 seconds. Factored: .00211 seconds.
COUNT ROWNUM<2 Elapsed: 2.42 seconds. Factored: .00012 seconds.
EXISTS Elapsed: 2.63 seconds. Factored: .00013 seconds.

* /

END;
/

Ask Tom "Hierarchical query"

2007-03-08T13:47:00.000Z

Ask Tom "Hierarchical query"

Nice bit in follow up comments about collapsing rows using analytics.

Mr Eugenides: Menteurs

2007-02-20T13:49:00.000Z

I'm not sure why the mendacity of this government still causes me to burst a blood vessel every now and then but this is extraordinary:

Mr Eugenides: Menteurs

Bad science - Gillian McKieth gets fisked

2007-02-13T08:50:00.000Z

Ben Goldacre has a great piece in today's Guardian where he comprehensively demolishes the scientific pretensions of Gillian McKeith, who presents You are what you eat on Channel 4.

"McKeith is a menace to the public understanding of science. She seems to misunderstand not nuances, but the most basic aspects of biology - things that a 14-year-old could put her straight on. She talks endlessly about chlorophyll, for example: how it's "high in oxygen" and will "oxygenate your blood" - but chlorophyll will only make oxygen in the presence of light. It's dark in your intestines, and even if you stuck a searchlight up your bum to prove a point, you probably wouldn't absorb much oxygen in there, because you don't have gills in your gut. In fact, neither do fish. In fact, forgive me, but I don't think you really want oxygen up there, because methane fart gas mixed with oxygen is a potentially explosive combination. Future generations will look back on this phenomenon with astonishment."

hat tip to Tom Coates and the poor little greek boy.

2006-11-29T08:36:00.000Z

Stuff I find useful

2006-09-05T21:22:00.000+01:00

Here is a list of some of the software I find useful:

Visual Studio 2005
Cygwin - Free unix style utilities such as grep, xwindows client etc.
SQL Developer - Free ide from Oracle. Extensible plug-in architecture.
Firefox - Much better browser than Internet Explorer. Configurable.
CruiseControl.Net Continuous integration tool
Enterprise Architect - UML tool
Textpad/UltraEdit32 - Text editors, UltraEdit has more features but textpad is more lightweight.
Refactor! - Refactoring addin for Visual Studio

FXCop Code analysis tool
NUnit - Unit testing tool for .Net
Quest Code Tester for Oracle(previously known as QUTE)
SharpDevelop 2.0 - Open Source IDE for .Net (C#,VB and Boo). It includes a tool for converting VB to C# and vice versa.
Oracle Developer Tools - Addin for Visual Studio

Troubleshooting automated builds with CruiseControl.Net, PVCS and MSBuild

2006-04-18T09:33:00.000+01:00

Following on from our efforts to automate our build process, I have been experimenting with Continuous Integration using CruiseControl.Net. This integrates the various parts of the build process such as source control, build tools, testing tools etc. and can remove a lot of the grunt work from performing builds. The cool thing about it is that it can be set up to poll the source control system for modifications and trigger a build whenever one of the source files changes so you get early notice of when the build is broken.

The tool is fairly well documented using a wiki. As with many wikis though, some parts of the documentation receive more attention than others. This caused me a few problems as we are using an old version of PVCS for source control and the PVCS docs are a bit thin. I got it working after a bit of trial and error and subsequent browsing of other areas of the site for different source control providers gave some tips that appear to be common to all source providers, so a common section would have been useful.

Installation was fairly simple and I proceeded to set up a simple test project:

<sourcecontrol type="pvcs">

<executable>X:\VM\Win32\Bin\pcli.exe</executable>

<project>S:\PVCS Databases</project>
<subproject>/LIBRARY/.Net/NullableDateTimePicker</subproject>
<workingDirectory >C:\development\LIBRARY\.Net\NullableDateTimePicker</workingDirectory>

<autoGetSource >True</autoGetSource>
<labelOrPromotionName >shared_DEV</labelOrPromotionName>
</sourcecontrol>
This configuration did not work and I had to investigate a bit more how it works. What seems to happen is that CruiseControl issues a succession of pcli commands and use the output from each to build further batch files for use by the next command. On my system, these batch files were saved to my temp directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Local Settings\Temp

When the next command attempted to use the file as input, the directory name was not escaped so the embedded spaces caused it to fail. I worked around this by setting my TEMP and TMP environment variables to point to C:\agtemp\temp this allowed me to proceed to the next step.

Now that the pcli commands were succesfully running, I had to change a source file in order to trigger the build. When I did this, I noticed that the pcli command produced by CruiseControl only got changed files when I had assumed that it would get all files in the project. This does make sense as the structure in PVCS does not neccesarily map directly to the .Net project structure. You are supposed to already have all the source code available in your working directory before starting CruiseControl which then just gets subsequent modifications before performing the build. If you need to get all of it then you can do a get for a specific label or promotion group by adding a </labelorpromotionname> element whose value corresponds to your label or promotion group.

Finally, I wasn't getting any executables even though the build was reported as succesful. This was another mistaken assumption on my part as I thought that it would automatically call MSBuild for the project. I added an MSBuild task to the project and configured it to call my solution file which then resulted in a shiny new dll in the release folder.

Automating builds with PVCS and MSBuild

2006-04-13T22:57:00.000+01:00

We are currently using PVCS version 6.8 as the Source Code Control system on a large .Net project. The project consists of 30 Assemblies so the builds take quite a while. I have been trying to get automated builds working so that we can run them as an overnight job. The script turned out to be quite simple in the end but working out the right combination of options was a trial and error process. Here is the script we used in the end:

REM -aworkpath Path to place workfiles in. Overrides default workspace for project
REM -bpprojpath path to base project to use when resolving references, required when -a or -o specified
REM -prDBpath to PVCS database
REM -z recursive flag, operate on specified project and all sub-projects
REM -gPromotionGroup get files with specified promotion group or higher
REM entity project to operate on

x:\vm\win32\bin\pcli get -bp"/Billing/Source" -gGBDEV -pr"X:\VM\vmdevint" -aH:\gettest -z "/Billing/Source"
REM cd to workpath
cd H:\gettest
REM
REM C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\msbuild /logger:EmailLogger,"C:\EmailLogger\bin\Release\EmailLogger.dll";To=buildmanager@tempuri.org;From=buildmanager@tempuri.org;Subject=BuildLog:%DATE%;Host=mail.tempuri.org Billing.sln
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\msbuild Billing.sln

The commented out call to msbuild includes a call to a custom logger that will email the results of the build. The source code for the logger was obtained from this blog

Photos

2006-03-31T22:14:00.000+01:00

I've been playing with a number of different sites recently to store my digital photos and order prints. One of the nicest for sharing photos is flickr.com. The UI is very slick and it is very flexible in the way that you can organize photos. Unfortunately, you cannot (yet) order prints from a UK supplier from the site.

Most of the UK print shops (Jessops, SupaSnaps etc.) have some online ordering and photo-sharing facilities, however they often have limits on the amount of time that photos will be kept for and/or storage limits. Also, the bulk upload facilities often rely on ActiveX controls which is a pain if you use Firefox as your browser or a non-Windows OS such as Linux.

I have finally settled on photobox.co.uk. The browser based bulk upload tool is a java applet so it works on linux and they also allow you to upload files by FTP. There is an initial storage limit of 200 Mb but this increases by 50Mb for each order placed.

Finally resurrecting this blog

2006-03-24T21:47:00.000Z

As I am on holiday this week I have finally got around to resurrecting my blog. I originally opened it as somewhere to store links to sites I'd found on the internet but
del.icio.us is a much better alternative.

mono-debugger

2004-09-02T14:32:00.000+01:00

Tried to compile mono-debugger-0.9 from source and got a similar error in wrapper.c to that in this post

The Mono Handbook

2004-09-01T12:24:00.000+01:00

The Mono Handbook

What is Mono?

2004-08-25T20:02:00.000+01:00

What is Mono?

Mono is an open source implementation of the .Net platform