a developer's diary

Cannot get mail on a new iPhone?

2016-06-08T17:59:00.001-07:00

You just got your new iPhone, configured your Exchange email, everything seems OK until you actually try to retrieve mail from the server.
All of a sudden, you get a message saying:
"cannot get mail the connection to the server failed"

You tried everything:

deleting the account and recreating it
restarting your phone
changing different "Period to sync" settings
3G vs WiFi connection
Even resetting your phone

Well, if you tried all of the above, then it's time to log in to Outlook Web App.

Go to Options->See all options->Phone->Phones

You should see a list of all the mobile devices you used with ActiveSync for your Exchange account.

Now, if there's already 10 in the list - there's your problem.

Just delete one of the existing and not used devices and the mail will suddenly start to appear on your new iPhone.

Install PL/Python and PLV8 to PostgreSQL (Ubuntu)

2013-11-13T15:50:00.002-08:00

When looking at official PostgreSQL documentation, to install PL/Python of PLV8 (JavaScript V8) procedural languages to PostgreSQL 9.3, it is sufficient to do:

postgres@host:~$ createlang plv8 dbname

postgres@host:~$ createlang plpythonu dbname

from a terminal, logged on as a user known to PostgreSQL.

But, when tried this after a fresh install of PostgreSQL 9.3, I got something like:

createlang: language installation failed: ERROR: could not open extension control file "/usr/share/postgresql/9.3/extension/plpython2u.control": No such file or directory

Well, if you are confused just like me, you need first to install Ubuntu packages for the two procedural language, and then to enjoy the inspiring moments of using these powerful programming languages to write your stored procedures.

Something like this:

user@host:~$ sudo apt-get install postgresql-plpython-9.3

for Python 2, and

user@host:~$ sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.3-plv8

for JavaScript V8.

After this, you can issue the documentation instructed:

postgres@host:~$ createlang plv8 dbname

postgres@host:~$ createlang plpythonu dbname

Other Ubuntu packages containing languages that might be interesting:

postgresql-plpython3-9.3 - for using Python3 as procedural language with PostgreSQL (if you dare!).
postgresql-plperl-9.3 - to use Perl as a procedural language inside PostgreSQL stored procedures.
postgresql-pltcl-9.3 - Tcl procedural language.

Do The Work Review

2011-12-26T11:25:00.000-08:00

I wrote a short review of the "Do The Work" book, gave it 3 stars. Here's the link:

http://t.co/3jMBFFI4

Simple way to debug Windows Service startup

2011-10-11T01:43:00.001-07:00

If you come to situation that you need to debug the startup of your Windows Service here's a simple and dirty (and stupid) method that helps in most situations.
This could be used in situation where your service immediately starts and stops.
Windows Services reports a message like this:

The "serviceName" service on Local Computer started abd then stopped. Some services stop automatically if they are not in use by other services or programs.

Usually, to debug a service you'll need to setup the breakpoint in your code, attach to the process from Visual Studio, and debug upon hitting the breakpoint.
Problem is if your service immediately exits and your don't have time to attach the debugger.
Simple, stupid way to debug it is to... guess what?... add a Thread.Sleep() as the first line in your code.
Sample, service acting as a WCF Host and it's OnStartup() method:

protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
{
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(30000);
myHost= new ServiceHost(typeof(MyService)); //set breakpoint here
myHost.Open();
}

Now you have enough time to attach the debugger from Visual Studio and you don't have to use Windows Debugger Tools or similar advanced methods.

Setting up MMS on Google Nexus One

2011-03-15T15:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a short post if you ever come to a problem setting up MMS on Google's Nexus One phone.

As far as I've figured it out, the problem emerges if your operator requires different APN's for Internet connection and MMS service.

To skip all the trouble I had figuring out what's the problem, the bottom line is that you must set APN type for the one that you use for Internet access to "default" and APN type for MMS must be set to "mms". Caps matter.

All the time I've left APN type for the Internet APN empty. Nexus One lets you write anything you want for acces, other Android devices usually let you choose from one of the predefined values. If you left it empty, Internet access will work, but if you define another APN for MMS (there you must enter "mms" as APN type), MMS won't work. When you set APN type of the Internet APN to "default", and left everything else as before, MMS will start working.

Here are the sample settings for my operator (BH Mobile) that work on my Nexus One.

Internet APN

Name: BHMobile
APN: active.bhmobile.ba
Proxy:
Port:
Username:
Password:
Server:
MMSC:
MMS Proxy:
MMS port:
MCC: 218 (this can be different for your operator, Nexus One usually automatically recognizes it)
MNC: 90(this can be different for your operator, Nexus One usually automatically recognizes it)
Authentication type: None
APN type: default (this was the problem all the time while MMS didn't work, it was not set)

MMS APN

Name: BHMobileMMS
APN: mms.bhmobile.ba
Proxy:
Port:
Username:
Password:
Server:
MMSC: http://mms.bhmobile.ba/cmmsc/post
MMS Proxy: 195.222.056.041
MMS port: 8080
MCC: 218 (this can be different for your operator, Nexus One usually automatically recognizes it)
MNC: 90(this can be different for your operator, Nexus One usually automatically recognizes it)
Authentication type: None
APN type: mms

What is really weird is that Internet APN setting was causing problems with MMS APN. I assume that it was using the Internet APN when trying to send MMS until I've set the APN type to default. Afterwards, it searched the MMS APN and used the correct one. Just assumption...

Top 5 things that will get you bored

2010-11-18T11:55:00.000-08:00

There are several things that get you bored and unsatisfied with your job if you constantly repeat them and if these things make more than 85% of your everyday work for a longer period of time.

Business escalations - if you constantly fight with unsatisfied customers, failing projects, interpersonal problems, etc. If all of these problems end up at your desk too often, you'll get bored.
Repetition - you're constantly repeating previously acquired knowledge and really not learning anything new in the professional sense.
"Disconnected" boss - this may seem awkward, but if your boss lets you do too much on your own, you'll get bored eventually. Monitoring also means that someone cares for what you do.
Constant pay - you're getting payed same amount of money for your work every month and no change in any direction will also get you bored.
Compensating incompetence - if you often compensate incompetence of some of your colleagues and they're not getting sanctioned will eventually get you bored; regardless of whether you're getting rewarded for it.

Most of these points seem like a regular tasks for some jobs, but if there's too much of these you'll definitely get bored at work.

Human mail dispatchers

2010-11-01T11:22:00.000-07:00

I've recently read the book Rework by 37signals.com founders.
First of all, I highly recommend that you read it. It'll definitely make you rethink the way you do your business, at least it did to me, and hopefully you'll really rework to some extent.
Basically, book presents an agile approach to starting, running and growing your business. The ideas presented look revolutionary from the point of view described in widely adopted business related books.
One the chapters deals with delegators It's named "Delegators are dead-weight". Delegators are managers that dispatch work to other people, all work. What I've seen in my career is that the delegators are glorified as great managers and delegating is sometimes pointed out as the single-best management virtue. Don't do it yourself, delegate, I was often said. Delegation is surely important in management, as you're required to organize and lead people. But the problem with delegators is that delegation is the only thing that they do, and this is not good. Managers are supposed to delegate, of course, but their work must add value. I've seen many managers that delegate all work in such a manner that they can be easily changed with a little bit more complex mail routing script. This will definitely not bring added value. If you see a delegator in your company, fire him and shorten the reporting line.
Related to my previous post, intentional managers are mostly delegators, and accidental managers do too little delegation.

Intentional and Accidental Managers

2010-10-24T14:01:00.000-07:00

There are two kind of managers, intentional and accidental managers.

Intentional managers are educated to be managers. They start their carriers as managers. Usually, besides huge knowledge of by-the-book management rules, they also have a strong theoretical background on psychology. Also, these people are very self-organized and they are able to organize people to do some work in a way that’s easy to monitor and control. Most of all, they have generalization approach to managing work, especially at the beginning of their carriers. Generalization approach means that they use general rule for management regardless of the business domain. They follow the very same rules whether they run a shoe factory line or a software development team.

Accidental managers are, first of all, craftsmen. Being extremely good in their everyday work got them to management in the first place. This kind of managers know their business domain very well, they have working knowledge on the matter and they earned the manager’s position by saving several problematic projects. They manage work through specialization. While working on the project, they go down to all the little details and seek to know every single thing that’s related to the project’s result.

So, which kind of managers is better?

As with everything in life, there’s no silver bullet.

Speaking of bullets, here are few on the diversity of these two types to conclude:

Intentional managers tend to delegate all of the work, accidental managers do (too) much of the work themselves.
Intentional managers lead larger teams in a very organized way. Accidental managers have problems managing large teams.
Intentional managers write great reports and present them to the satisfaction of stakeholders. Accidental managers have problems writing reports at all, and when writing, they produce reports focused on problems and rarely mentioning good things they and team has done.
Accidental managers work great in time of crisis. They are great cost-cutters. Mainly, they are appointed at the time of crisis. Intentional managers much easier surrender to the crisis and flee from the battlefield.
Accidental managers got bored easily when business is stable. In the day of crisis they are troubleshooter, in stable business they, as managers, are troublemakers. Intentional managers work best while in stable business. Reports are clear, regular and everyone can celebrate good results.

the dead parrot

2010-10-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

It seems that Microsoft has dropped Oslo and it's focusing on OData and EDM as a more loosely coupled approach to modeling. I was really interested in "M" and creating DSL's in the language, was impressed with Don Box and Doug Perdy at PDC2008 but it seems that we'll have to wait for another fad to occupy our dsl-thirsty minds. Weirdest of all, it seems that Doug also vanished with the Oslo.

Nevertheless, after a few posts on SQL Server Modeling, Oslo, and "M" and a long pause posting, I'm here to write about the next technology I'm trying to learn and apply.
This time it's Python with Google App Engine.This should be a big change after years of using C# and Java in my everyday work. This is somehow weird, because actually I'll still continue to use MS technologies at work, but examining the Google side of development world is like a new hobby.

Right now I'm going through the tutorials and docs on Google code and I really like the language and the approach. Provided services give a lot of power instantly to your applications. You don't have to worry about authentication - authenticate users with Google account, don't worry about the database details and query optimization - just use the easy-to-use Datastore service. Emails, cron jobs, XMPP, Google Apps, all together gives a great platform for development and enable you to focus on your.... Idea!

If you don't have an idea for the next I believe you should try developing an application that you need and you would like to see available. Taken this approach what I miss really is an application to easily organize and track my tasks. I get and assign tasks through several tools, Outlook, issue tracking tools at work, Google tasks, and of course RTM. At the end of day, each application is missing some feature that I think I really need. Thus, I'll try - as an exercise - to start with a task tracking application. Not a great idea, but at least - it could be a real enough project to learn Python and development for Google App Engine.

SQL Server Modeling November CTP Installation Problems

2009-11-20T13:11:00.000-08:00

I had problems installing the "Oslo" November 2009 CTP, some of the Domains were not installed correctly.

First problem was due to the fact that I was using local SQL Server Express 2008.
I fixed this by manually installing domains after the installation.

Open the "Microsoft SQL Server Modeling CTP Command Prompt" (Start -> Programs -> Microsoft SQL Server Modeling CTP)
Install each of the missing domains by using mx tool. Type mx install Microsoft.Uml2.mx /server:.\sqlexpress /database:Repository /property:RepositoryChangeTracking=+
It helped to explicitly use "/server:.\sqlexpress" for database server name
Use this to install all of the missing domains by replacing the above "Microsoft.Uml2.mx" with appropriate .mx file. I've installed System.Runtime.mx, System.Identity.mx, and Microsoft.Uml2.mx this way.

Also, I received timeout while trying to run these commands. It was due to problems with login. In my case, it helped to add /t:Integrated as a final option in the above commands.

And, while trying to install the UML domain (Microsoft.Uml2.mx), I received error that is also mentioned in the Readme.htm file:

catalogentries.sql(43837,1): error M6040: Sql Exception: There is insufficient system memory in resource pool 'internal' to run this query.

This was caused by the fact that my machine (virtual machine) had 1GB RAM. Increasing RAM to 2GB on the machine helped to solve the problem.

Hope some of this will be helpful to you.

Journey ended, a new one begins

2009-11-11T01:46:00.000-08:00

Few days ago I wrote in my previous post that my impression from the PDC2008, especially while talking with development team, that Microsoft is not quite sure what to do with "Oslo".
In yesterday's post on his blog, Douglas Purdy writes that "Oslo" will be shipped as "SQL Server Modeling", as part of the releases of SQL Server.
Here's a quote:

"The components of the SQL Server Modeling CTP are:

“M” is a highly productive, developer friendly, textual language for defining schemas, queries, values, functions and DSLs for SQL Server databases
“Quadrant” is a customizable tool for interacting with large datasets stored in SQL Server databases
“Repository” is a SQL Server role for the the secure sharing of models between applications and systems

We will announce the official names for these components as we land them, but the key thing is that all of these components are now part of SQL Server and will ship with a future release of that product."

So, it seems that journey to "Oslo" as a "homeless", "general purpose" modeling platform has ended and it has found its "foster home" in MS SQL Server product. Nevertheless, I still like it.

Journey to "Oslo"

2009-11-08T01:34:00.000-08:00

First time I heard of Microsoft's "Oslo" was last year while making final arrangements with my colleagues for attending the PDC 2008. My two colleagues and I were strongly recommended the "Oslo": Building textual DSLs session by our company's Chief Software Architect. Before that, I've learned a little bit about DSLs by reading some of the chapters of Martin Fowler's DSL Book WIP (work in progress). I liked the idea of DSLs very much and was eager to see and attend all of the PDC 2008 "Oslo" sessions.

I attended three of the "Oslo" sessions then and also talked with development team at "Ask-the-experts" night (Chris Andersen and Doug Purdy were present, too). My strong impression was that it is definitely a powerful concept and it is worth learning, but I didn't not get a clear idea of how to put all this into a working business application. I also asked some of the "Oslo" team members during "Ask-the-experts" nights about intended use and whether Microsoft will build some DSLs for common domains like finance, insurance, etc., but answer I got was that "developer's community" is expected to build DSLs. All in all, I left L.A. a bit confused about "M" and "Oslo", but still with strong interest in the technology.

A year had passed since and I didn't follow "Oslo" related news really, until yesterday I read this article by Kraig Brockschmidt. After reading the article I've finally decided to try and learn "Oslo", build a simple DSL, build a runtime for it and execute an application.

The aspects I'm really interested with "Oslo" are:

Ease of model use in .NET applications
Ease of reuse of models/DSLs
Flexibility, change management, model extensions, etc.
How will this increase developer productivity?