Morne Wolfaardt Blog

Change DbContext at runtime Entity Framework

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 11:56:00 +0000

I recently had to work with multiple connection strings in entity framework, and the easiest way to change the connection string at runtime is to edit the db context and add another db context that accepts the connection string

public EnviroEPIEntities()
           : base("name=EnviroEPIEntities")
       {
       }

       public EnviroEPIEntities(string connectionString) : base("name=EnviroEPIEntities")
       {

       }

Get local weather updates by simply searching Google

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:57:00 +0000

You can now see what your weather will be like simple by searching in Google for the term “weather Johannesburg” where Johannesburg will be your location.

Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 05:53:00 +0000

Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview has been release today.

Examples include Fishbowl in HTML 5

Microsoft Dynamics 2011 CRM Installation Friday

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 11:04:00 +0000

It's Friday, and I've just installed Microsoft Dynamics 2011 CRM

Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 08:08:00 +0000

Microsoft Expression Web Service Pack 1 is out

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 04:12:00 +0000

Microsoft Expression Web Service Pack 1 is out and has some nice updates. Updates includes HTML 5 support.

The download is around ~ 30MB to download and can be downloaded at : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=4C840D64-C95A-4328-9D80-47DC681741AD&displaylang=en

Changing property values on runtime when running in debug mode

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:13:00 +0000

I always hate it when you have to change settings between production and testing / development environments. I came across the following peace of code that really helps a lot.

Please note that there a lot of other ways to do the same, a good example is connection settings in the web.config file that can be changed when you publish a web application.

Basically what will happen is that when you run your application in debug mode the Uri of the hyperlink will be set to debugurl

For development purposes this works wonders, but I would still prefer to change setting using post build commands or even have two different configuration files.

For more information visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4y6tbswk.aspx

Windows 7 SP1 Release

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 15:50:00 +0000

Microsoft has release Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Server 2008

Url : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=c3202ce6-4056-4059-8a1b-3a9b77cdfdda

Requirements

Your current operating system must be the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 (build 7600).

Users updating through Windows Update/WSUS must install the Servicing Stack Update (SSU) that handles the installation and removal of software updates, language packs, and optional Windows features. This update is necessary to successfully install or uninstall the service pack; it also improves the performance and reliability of the service pack installation. This update is part of the standalone update package and will be offered as a separate package on Windows Update.

For System Administrators, there is a standalone installation package available. However, most home and small business users will receive SP1 through Windows Update. Windows Update utilizes an efficient transfer mechanism to download only the bytes that are needed, resulting in a download that ranges in size from 44 megabytes (MB) to 96 MB depending on the system architecture

Download Sizes

x86 ~ 537 MB
x64 ~ 904 MB

Noticeable changes

Improved HDMI audio device performance
A small percentage of users have reported issues in which the connection between computers running Windows 7 and HDMI audio devices can be lost after system reboots. Updates have been incorporated into SP1 to ensure that connections between Windows 7 computers and HDMI audio devices are consistently maintained

Corrected behaviour when printing mixed-orientation XPS documents
Prior to the release of SP1, some customers have reported difficulty when printing mixed-orientation XPS documents (documents containing pages in both portrait and landscape orientation) using the XPS Viewer, resulting in all pages being printed entirely in either portrait or landscape mode. This issue has been addressed in SP1, allowing users to correctly print mixed-orientation documents using the XPS Viewer.

Change to behaviour of “Restore previous folders at logon” functionality
SP1 changes the behaviour of the “Restore previous folders at logon” function available in the Folder Options Explorer dialog. Prior to SP1, previous folders would be restored in a cascaded position based on the location of the most recently active folder. That behaviour changes in SP1 so that all folders are restored to their previous positions.
Enhanced support for additional identities in RRAS and IPsec
Support for additional identification types has been added to the Identification field in the IKEv2 authentication protocol. This allows for a variety of additional forms of identification (such as E-mail ID or Certificate Subject) to be used when performing authentication using the IKEv2 protocol.

Support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX)
There has always been a growing need for ever more computing power and as usage models change, processors instruction set architectures evolve to support these growing demands. Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) is a 256 bit instruction set extension for processors. AVX is designed to allow for improved performance for applications that are floating point intensive. Support for AVX is a part of SP1 to allow applications to fully utilize the new instruction set and register extensions.

Improved Support for Advanced Format (512e) Storage Devices
SP1 introduces a number of key enhancements to improve support of recently introduced storage devices with a 4KB physical sector size (commonly referred to as "Advanced Format"). These enhancements include functionality fixes, improved performance, and updated storage drivers which provide applications the ability to retrieve information as to the physical sector size of storage device.

SQL Server 2008 T-SQL: Insert Multiple Rows

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 19:43:00 +0000

In SQL Server 2005, in order to insert 3 rows to a table, you had to run 3 INSERT statements:

insert into Customers (Name, City, Phone) values ('Jon', 'Johannesburg', '2343245')

insert into Customers (Name, City, Phone) values ('Pete', 'Pretoria', '0987345')

insert into Customers (Name, City, Phone) values ('Morne', 'Cape Town', '275466')

In SQL Server 2008, you can insert multiple rows in a single insert statement.

insert into Customers (Name, City, Phone) values

('Jon', 'Johannesburg', '2343245'),

('Pete', 'Pretoria', '0987345'),

('Morne', 'Cape Town', '275466')

Find easy and affordable web hosting with Microsoft and partners

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 08:32:00 +0000

Microsoft has a great website for finding hosting for you asp.net application http://www.microsoft.com/web/hosting/home

Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster.

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 07:36:00 +0000

Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that <machineKey> configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that <machineKey> configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster.

While trying to install nopCommerce , I received an error : Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that <machineKey> configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster.

After a lot of Googleing I found a solution, you need to generate a machine key, there is an online machine key resource generator http://aspnetresources.com/tools/machineKey

Generate a machine key and add it into your web.config

<system.web>
<machineKey validationKey="F097E63883362E7ED4291ACC1CC226C7B93EEF617E2DA8AA291F88977EBA96D150E44C67D48A927D5C6EC75F6398F3C97655D500B786963C7604420B14368532" decryptionKey="F4ACD003B584F22BC152107F5ED71713CD224ED301A2AC3D4D019CA28818988E" validation="SHA1" decryption="AES" />
</system.web>

Trying out Internet Explorer 9 Beta and…. Not responding error in the first hour..

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 07:08:00 +0000

I tried to connect to my router on a local IP and the application just crashed..

Luckily I had Google Chrome to save the day

Internet Explorer 9 Top Developer Competition

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 08:42:00 +0000

Sign up and join the 6to9 League, develop and show off your skills and you can win a trip of a lifetime to the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC).

Develop a add-in for IE 9 and you could become a MVP. Sign up at http://www.6to9league.co.za

Winners will be announced at Dev Days in March 2011.

IE 9 works on Widows Vista and Windows 7.

How to add RunAs to Windows Server 2008

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 10:35:00 +0000

The RunAs feature is gone in Server 2008 and a lot of the time you want to run your applications under a different username. I do a lot of software development where you need different users to log into Internet Explorer. This was always easy holding down Shift and right-clicking on Internet Explorer, but with Windows 2008 the functionality is not available.

To get the functionality back, you need an application called ShellRunas by Windows Sysinternals.

Before:

After:

To install RunAs first download it for the Sysinternals website (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc300361.aspx) and then extract the zip file to a folder.

Go into the command line and into the extracted folder.

Type ShellRunAs.exe /reg and you are set.

Automated website testing using WatiN

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:27:00 +0000

You can automate website testing using a great automated web testing tool WatiN (http://watin.sourceforge.net/). WatiN was developed using C# and makes testing your website easy.

To get started you first need to download the WatiN assembly from http://watin.sourceforge.net/. After downloading the assembly, create a new console application in Visual Studio.

Right click on References and select Add Reference… Click on the Browse tab and select the folder where you downloaded the WatiN assembly. The assembly that you should reference is called WatiN.Core.dll

You are now ready to start building your first automated test. In your application add the following line :

using WatiN.Core;

Below is an example of my my constructor

static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            IE ie = Connect("http://www.google.com");
            ie.TextField(Find.ByTitle("Google Search")).TypeText("Morne Wolfaardt");
            ie.Button(Find.ByText("Google Search")).Click();
        }

In this constructor I create a new instance of IE and opens Internet Explorer and browse to google.com. Next I find the textbox with the title of “Google Search” WatiN provides a lot of ways to access element. I would recommend using the Find.ById rather than Find.ByTitle. To get the Id or Title or any other property of an element, can open up IE Developer Tools (F12), this is located under Tools –> Developer Tools.

This is an introduction guide on how to test your website, the ideal would be to have a source file like an XML file or text file with all your values that you would like to test with and then replace the .TypeText(“my test value”) with .TypeText(testValue).

Technorati Tags: Automation,WatiN,C#,.Net,Automated web testing,web testing

Change Data Capture (CDC) in SQL Server 2008

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:03:00 +0000

Change Data Capture records INSERTs, UPDATEs, and DELETEs applied to SQL Server tables, and makes a record available of what changed, where, and when, in simple relational 'change tables' rather than in an esoteric chopped salad of XML. These change tables contain columns that reflect the column structure of the source table you have chosen to track, along with the metadata needed to understand the changes that have been made. Pinal Dave explains all, with plenty of examples in a simple introduction.

Read more at

http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/learn-sql-server/introduction-to-change-data-capture-(cdc)-in-sql-server-2008/

Microsoft Enterprise Library

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:34:00 +0000

The Microsoft Enterprise Library is a collection of reusable software components (application blocks) designed to assist software developers with common enterprise development cross-cutting concerns (such as logging, validation, data access, exception handling, and many others). Application blocks are a type of guidance; they are provided as source code, test cases, and documentation that can be used "as is," extended, or modified by developers to use on complex, enterprise-level line-of-business development projects.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc467894.aspx

Munch

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:52:00 +0000

Circa:
Home town: Salisbury
Members:

Kim Clayton-Millar - Lead vocals
Pete Anderson - Lead guitar
Ernie Mindry - Bass
Mike Schofield - Organ
Rod Driver – Drums

The band are particularly remembered for their excellent Uriah Heep covers.

How to create a alphabetical indexer using javascript and jquery

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:07:00 +0000

If you need an alphabetical indexer like the following :

A(3) | B(4) | C(3)

to display how many articles, items is per character, then this little javascript is just for you. It uses Jquery.

        1: <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

       2: $(document).ready(function() {

       3: $('#alphabetNavigation').html('');

       4:  

       5:  

       6: var x;

       7: var y;

       8: var alphabet = Array('a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z');

       9:  

var amount = 0;

var alpharray = new Array();

$('li').each(

function(i)

{

amount = amount +1;

//console.log("Number of A: "+ amount);

alpharray.push($(this).text());

}

)

  

for (x in alphabet)

{

amount = 0;

for (y in alpharray)

{

if (alpharray[y].charAt(0).toLowerCase() == alphabet[x])

{

amount = amount +1;

}

  

  

}

$('#alphabetNavigation').append((alphabet[x] + " (" +amount+ ") "));

}

  

}); 

</script>

1) Create a div with the id of alphabetNavigation

       1: <div id="alphabetNavigation">

       2: <img src="http://yourdomain/images/ajax-loader.gif" /> Loading index

       3: </div>

2)Now just generate List Items (LI)

       1: <ul>

       2: <li>Alice Cooper</li>

       3: <li>Audioslave</li>

       4: </ul>

3) This script will execute after you website has loaded, and will replace the image with text

4) Please leave a comment or reply for any assistance.

Imitating 101 Voices

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:28:00 +0000

Imitating 101 Voices

Imitating 101 Voices
Uploaded by absolutexxx

IT Guy VS Dumb Employees

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:58:00 +0000

IT Guy VS Dumb Employees

Muay Thai Fight

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:19:00 +0000

Muay Thai Fight - Final Challange November 2008 - Morne Wolfaardt (me) VS Leroy Saunders

Lady GaGa - Poker Face

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:39:00 +0000

Lady GaGa: Poker Face http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeTT8FcDpbk

Kid Cudi - Day And Night

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:52:00 +0000

Kid Cudi - Day And Night

Day N Nite - Kid Cudi ( Crookers Remix )

noreply@blogger.com (boeta) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:48:00 +0000

Day 'N' Nite - Kid Cudi ( Crookers Remix )