Technade

Autocomplete extender not working with IIS 7 + and website with role based authorization defined : ASP.NET

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Sat, 21 May 2011 11:13:00 +0000

Last week I came across a very weird scenario on my website which I am trying to migrate to IIS 7.5 . My website is configured on anonymous authentication and authorization is only restricted to specified roles in the application. E.g as shown in fig below.

But unfortunately my autocomplete extender stopped working. My Autocomplete.asmx is located in a folder called " Services " . I am getting a authentication challenge " 401.2 " when I tried to access the service ( .asmx ) through the URL.I tried to check all my handlers in IIS whether .asmx is a allowed extension and everything is configured correctly. Since I am receiving a authentication challenge , I decided to play with the authorization of the folder. I dont know the exact reason but unlike IIS 6 , IIS 7 + accesses the folder under a different user context ( May be network service, IUSR or something else ) . I tried to set the authorization to either "all users" or "all anonymous users " like in the figure below. If you come across this kind of situation, you can try.

I am trying to find out the user context under which autocomplete accesses its asmx.... but this one should help you..

If you are facing problems with autocomplete extender and its usage , let me know.

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How to change default search provider in Firefox ? go to google typing in address bar

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Sun, 15 May 2011 15:29:00 +0000

A small yet useful firefox tweak .Lot of people find it annoying to see their default search being changed from Google to ask.com or to something else.

If you type something in your address bar instead of correct URL, it will go to the default search engine. Firefox by default comes with Google as its default search engine. But when you install some toolbar like ask toolbar. Yahoo toolbar ...., it will change your default search engine. Lot of users find it quite annoying as there is no straight shortcut to change this. So How to change your default search provider to Google in Firefox ?

Type " about:config " in the address bar of your Firefox.
You might recieve a screen like below if you are opening Firefox configuration for the first time. Just click on " I'll be careful, I promise "

In the screen that appears , you will see a filter textbox just below the address bar as shown in the fig below.

In the Filter textbox, please enter the following .

browser.search.selectedEngine

Now just Right click on the entry you see and Click on " Reset " . You should see the status being changed to " default.

This should normally search in Google when you type in address.

Now for the right side text box , to reset your search engine, just type the following in your filter box then type in the name of the search engine you wish to have as the default search engine ( Something like " Google " or " Yahoo " )

browser.search.defaultenginename

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Google Chrome book review

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Fri, 13 May 2011 21:10:00 +0000

The net has already started buzzing about the netbook with a Google " Chrome " OS. Chrome operating system is the search giants attempt to develop a Cloud oriented Operating system. The chrome OS netbooks are going to make their debut on June 15 into the markets.

Why I say this is just another net book with Google flavour?

Because Chrome OS does nothing like a Desktop OS except that both have a browser :P... You can only run your web based applications with the help of advanced Chrome browser.Since there is nothing for the OS to really do, starting up such a netbook will just a tip of a minute .

If you ask me about the applications , the focus obviously is on the Google based applications ( Google docs , Gmail blah blah ). Well Google has really thought of a futuristic idea where they expect web based applications to server just like the desktop applications do today. They just wanted to facilitate this with the help of their Chrome browser.This open release of the software is known as Chromium OS – a play off the Chrome browser’s name.

Which notebooks will have Google Chrome OS ? What is the cost of Chrome Notebook ?

Machine	Samsung Series 5 (WIFI)	Samsung Series 5 (3G)	Acer Chromebook (WIFI)	Acer Chromebook (3G)

Consumer Price	429 $	499 $	349 $	??
Enterprise Price	28 $ per user / month	~ 31 $ per user / month	28 $ per user / month	~ 31 $ per user / month
Education Price (students)	20 $ per user / month	23 $ per user / month	20 $ per user / month	23 $ per user / month
Minimum contract	10 for Biz / Edu ; No limits on Consumer	10 for Biz / Edu ; No limits on Consumer	10 for Biz / Edu ; No limits on Consumer	10 for Biz / Edu ; No limits on Consumer
Included Data Limit	None	100 MB Monthly	None	100 MB Monthly

How is the hardware of Chrome notebook ?

Eventhough Chrome does not run a desktop OS , dont expect it to be as thin as a MacBook Air :). Its a bit thicker and has more weight than the Mac. People complained about a feel of the panels as well but it depends on the manufacturers.

The keyboard is a stripped version of normal laptop keyboard. There are no function keys. There are hard buttons to do things like go forward or backwards. The CAPS LOCK button has been replaced with a Search button.

The wireless adapter seems to be extremely good and connecting the internet is a piece of cake.. Thats the least we can expect from a netbook :)...

There are some printing woes reported by the people about Chrome notebook . You have to do something similar mentioned here http://www.google.com/landing/cloudprint/chromeos-enable.html

Certainly will raise some eye brows ...

Can I buy a Chrome notebook ?

If you want to show it to a couple of friends , I will say a Yes. Else wait for sometime to see the evolution. Everything it has been constructed for is still in evolution. Cloud has to go a long way to see everything on it. The could be more features installed into these notebook s based on feedback and with time .

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What is Hybrid Boot ? Windows 8 News

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Tue, 10 May 2011 20:13:00 +0000

There are lot of discussions going on the internet over a supposed to be windows leak which included some extra features like Live Mesh cloud sync , Hybrid boot ..

What is this Hybrid boot ?

Normally we use Hibernation in windows to achieve faster startup and to resume our work easily. Basically Hibernation saves the contents of your RAM to your hard disk to increase your start up speed.

Hybrid boot is a stripped version of conventional hibernate. Instead of storing the entire state of your machine, it only stores the current state of core Operating System files. This fastens the boot time of your Operating System when the next time you load it. Typically it would reduce the start up time to 20 sec as per some sources. But the time reduction would depend on the speed of disk, RAID setup ...

Hybrid boot will be enabled by default in Windows 8. You will not see the boot manager (in case if you have multiple OS ) when you use this option. But there is a manual possibility to disable this option in special cases.

Since it is still in build phase, this can be further improved at the time of release depending on the feedback Microsoft recieves.

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which is better ? ASP.NET MVC or WebForms : How to choose between MVC and Webforms ?

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Wed, 04 May 2011 21:01:00 +0000

ASP.NET Web Forms vs MVC !
What is the difference between ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC ?
When should I really choose MVC vs when should I choose webforms !

These are questions that normally run in the mind of any .NET developer in the recent times ( Confusing them what to learn ). Well both are used to build the same stuff and both have enough capabilities to build applications except that the way they are developed, tested and maintained is different. If some so called expert comes to you and says both are used to build different stuff , then it could very well be that he is not able to understand things correctly.

Let me present you a small table that tells you the differences between the both and simplify your queries . The green ones are the advantages and red ones can not be..

ASP.NET MVC	ASP.NET Web Forms
More control over HTML that is rendered to browser which means you can really generate cleaner HTML	Don’t offer such a fine control over the HTML that is rendered and most of the it gets dirtier that we know.
Superior separation between UI and code	UI and logic coupled with code making it complex
Supports Multiple View Engines. Reuse your model/ Controller and plug it to a different view engine.	A option to forget about :). Switching between views with lot of things ( Master page, user control , theme ) is not a cake walk.
No Viewstate meaning a smaller page size. Unavailability of viewstate has its disadvantage too.	The more persistent controls you need, the more your view state will be and hence your page size too.
Allows end to end Test driven development (TDD), easy implementation of Mocking.	Not so straight forward to do unit tests for everything especially for the logic tightly coupled with your UI.
Easy integration with client side libraries like Jquery	Integration is possible but switching will be a bit difficult.
Development does need more effort. Don’t expect it to happen in same pace as Web Forms.	Very Suitable for RAD (Rapid Application Development). Build small applications and quick prototypes. Ease of development for heavy LOB applications.
MVC is a complete new way of doing web design and development. It basically gives a abstraction on both.	Windows Form Style development. (Any one can do development). Feel at ease with drag, drop and clicks .Great designer support.
A lot of training and required for the developers to divert their mindset from conventional event driven programming. Frameworks and other things have still to evolve.	Greater visual studio support, Availability of resources and developers, Availability of third party controls.

So If we really look into the above analysis, ASP.NET web forms is a bit complex with lot of things ( ViewState, Postback, Page lifecycle, Data Binding ) having to be put in one place. The more complex things you start to make, the more complex your pages will start to become. Where as MVC is more of trying to loosely couple your HTML (VIEW) with the rest of code.

MVC does help you in doing a TDD but that does not mean you cant write your applications with out unit tests. Keeping the myths apart, When do you really need to choose MVC or Web Forms ?

Choose ASP.NET MVC	Choose ASP.NET Web Forms
More Test Driven Development (When you have to validate everything you write ) More Control on HTML and need for separation ( Designing vs Code) New large application (Especially build and evolve in long term)	· Rapid Application Development ( RAD ) and less time to Market applications · Winforms like programming interface ( Availability of Developers ) · Heavy Data driven applications · Existing Web Forms application need not be migrated to MVC

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How to deal with "IIS Metabase and IIS6 Configuration Compatibility" ? : IIS 7 issues

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Sun, 01 May 2011 16:03:00 +0000

Are you receiving any of the following errors ?

you need to install the "IIS Metabase and IIS6 Configuration Compatibility" feature under Internet Information Services-Web Management Tools-IIS 6 Management Capability to get the IIS6 ADSI provider installed.

Your project has been configured to work with IIS. Either you dont have IIS 6 metabase installed or your virtual directory is not configured as a application.

To access local IIS Web sites, you must run Visual Studio in the context of an administrator account.

If you are recieving any of these errors, you are in the right place to find a solution.

Well all of these errors occur because you either might be a newbie IIS 7 + on Windows 7 or Windows Vista !

Let me help you dissolving each of these :) .. Lets start with the simplest one.

To access local IIS Web sites, you must run Visual Studio in the context of an administrator account.

By default, Windows runs applications in a limited-rights user account even when you are logged on to the computer as an administrator.

To run Visual Studio with administrative permissions in Windows 7 or Vista

In Windows 7 or Vista , click Start, click All Programs, and then locate Visual Studio.
Right-click Microsoft Visual Studio, and then click Run as administrator.

you need to install the "IIS Metabase and IIS6 Configuration Compatibility" feature under Internet Information Services-Web Management Tools-IIS 6 Management Capability to get the IIS6 ADSI provider installed.

First of all , you should have sufficient administrative access to turn or turn off windows features.
If you have the admin previliges , Please go to control panel in Windows and select Programs as shown in figure below.
In the settings page that opens, please select Turn windows features on or off .
Now go to Internet Information Services and then :
- Expand Web Management Tools, expand IIS 6 Management Compatibility, and then select the IIS 6 Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility check box.
- Expand World Wide Web Services, expand Application Development Features, and then select the ASP.NET check box.
- Expand World Wide Web Services, expand Security, and then select the Windows Authentication check box.
- To enable Visual Studio to debug applications, you must configure IIS 7.0 with the Windows Authentication module. By default, the module is not configured as part of IIS.
- Click OK to start the IIS and ASP.NET installation process.

If you have resolved the above two, and still get the third error, Your project has been configured to work with IIS. Either you dont have IIS 6 metabase installed or your virtual directory is not configured as a application.

This is something very smallish but this is something that IIS 7 + has brought in. Well in IIS 6 its just a virtual directory setup thats enough to run a application. But in IIS 7 , you have to make it as a application as well.

Right click on your virtual directory and click on Convert to Application and you should get rid of this.

If you do the above three steps, you should be able to run your application and debug it :)

Courtesy : MSDN

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Roles in Windows Azure : What is web role and worker role ?

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Sun, 01 May 2011 10:11:00 +0000

After reading a lot of stuff about evolution of cloud and its economics, I finally started learning some real life stuff in the cloud world. Well I looked out for Enterprise lineant cloud services and I genuinely felt Microsoft is the choice for that. To go deeper , I started learning about the Cloud Operating System by Microsoft which is , Microsoft Azure ( PaaS ) .

As I started out reading about the hosted services in Azure , I came across a term which is called Role. Being a ASP.NET web developer, I was just confused with this role terminology in Azure. After giving some thought I am able to understand what is. For confused people like me :D, here is its definition .

Applications built on Azure should use atleast one of the roles below.

Web role – A web role is a role that is customized for web application programming as supported by IIS 7 and ASP.NET. The benefit of using this type of role is that the IIS setup is done for you automatically by Azure. This role is best used for providing a web based frontend for your hosted service. It is not suited for long running processes.
Worker role – A worker role is a role that is useful for generalized development, and may perform background processing for a web role. When you have a need for a background process that performs long running or intermittent tasks, you should normally go for Worker Role.
VM role – A VM role is a special type of role that enables you to define the configuration and updates of the operating system for the virtual machine. While a web role and a worker role run in a virtual machine, the VM role is the virtual machine, which gives you full control of operations. When you have long and complicated installations in the operating system or special setup issues, you should use this role. This role is especially suited for migrating existing applications to run as hosted services in Windows Azure.

I hope these definitions would have definitely helped you in understanding the roles in Azure.

If you want to learn about Creating a hosted service on Azure, please go to this link.

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How to enable windows authentication of IIS 7 + in Windows 7 or Vista ? No Windows authentication in IIS ?

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:15:00 +0000

I always had a Windows 7 Laptop at my home which I never used for development purposes. Today I installed Windows 7 enterprise version on my office laptop . I created a website and wanted to set the authentication to Windows . Surprisingly I could see only anonymous authentication which is enabled by default.

I remember sometime back I was modifying application host config file to play with windows Authentication settings on IIS 7.x . The configurations of IIS 7 + is not as simple and straight forward as it used to be in IIS 6 and lower version ( Probably Microsoft wanted the IIS admin to be a Geek :) ). So How do we enable Windows authentication in IIS 7 for windows 7 or Vista ?

First of all , you should have sufficient administrative access to turn or turn off windows features.
If you have the admin previliges , Please go to control panel in Windows and select Programs as shown in figure below.
In the settings page that opens, please select Turn windows features on or off .
Now Navigate to Internet Information services --> World wide Web Services --> Security and there you should be able to see different kinds of authentications in a dialog window, just as shown in the figure below.
Now you can choose the type of authentication you want to be enabled on your IIS 7.x server.
If it is Windows authentication , please select windows authentication or if it is Basic authentication , select Basic authentication based on your need.
Click Ok after selection and let windows handle it.
Now close / Restart your IIS and you should be able to see the chosen authentication types in your IIS as below.

Hope this has helped you.
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how to find column dependencies in SQL server ? SQL server 2005 / 2008

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 11:11:00 +0000

Did you ever want to find the dependencies of a column in all the tables and stored procedures in the database ! It helps you sometimes in finding the impact of the changes you want to make very easily. May be if you dont know about the database, it would help you understand the size of the changes you want to make.

Its very simple. All you need to do is just fire this query :)...

select name
from syscomments c
join sysobjects o on c.id = o.id
where TEXT like '%TableName%' and TEXT like '%ColumnName%'

Replace the Table name and the column name with the name of the table where the column is and the column name itself.

What is syscomments ?

As per MSDN, syscomments contains entries for each view, rule, default, trigger, CHECK constraint, DEFAULT constraint, and stored procedure within the database. The text column contains the original SQL definition statements.

What is Sysobjects ?

Sysobjects contains one row for each object that is created within a database, such as a constraint, default, log, rule, and stored procedure.

These are part of system views which you can find in the link below.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177862.aspx

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Efficient SQL server query tuning with SQL sentry Plan Explorer : Zoom in Zoom out SQL plan

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 10:01:00 +0000

A day back I had to fine tune a sql query which was way too complex to analyze with a glance. It would take endless time to do that by analyzing just the statements as I was dealing with a couple of million records..

So I decided to start using the tools available in Sql server Management Studio (SSMS) for fine tuning the query. For finding the cost associated with my query, I ran my query with my actual execution Plan set to On. When I ran the query, SSMS displayed the execution plan in the bottom pane of SSMS. Since My query is complex, so my execution plan looked like a train with 100 coaches :)...Navigating through the plan displayed in SSMS was so difficult. I could not make anything out of it. So I tried to find out tools which would help me to understand this plan in a efficient way and do some tuning with it.

I came across a wonderful tool ( Freeware ) which helped me in fine tuning my sql query easily.

SQL Sentry Plan Explorer is a lightweight standalone app that builds a graphical view using SQL query plan so that developers can understand it very easily. It does not require a collector service or database.

SQL Sentry Plan Explorer x64
SQL Sentry Plan Explorer x86

The image below explains how well the graphical view is constructed. Please click on the image to enlarge it

It helps us understand which elements in the plan costs more by displaying them in different colors ( Red for high cost, yellow for medium cost...)... It even displays the amount of data that flows between different elements to help you understand where you have more data. All you need to do is tweak accordingly and check the costs again.

How to load your plan into SQL sentry Plan explorer ?

There are different ways through which you can load your execution plan into SQL sentry plan explorer.

In SSMS, right-click a graphical plan and select “Show Execution Plan XML”, then copy and paste the plan XML into the Plan Explorer. It doesn’t matter which pane is active, the clipboard handler is global and will auto-detect the plan XML.
Save an execution plan from SSMS to a .sqlplan file, then open the file using the Open toolbar button, File->Open menu, or Ctrl + O. Raw plan XML files and .QueryAnalysis files (our own proprietary format) are also supported.
Right-click an existing .sqlplan file in Windows Explorer and select “Open with -> SQL Sentry Plan Explorer”.
Drag-and-drop a plan file onto the application (The easiest way !)

The sentry plan explorer offers you different views of the plan tree namely :

Plan Diagram
Plan Tree - A tree representation of the plan which shows all operations and associated metrics
Top Operations - List of all plan operations, sorted by total estimated cost by default in descending Order
Query Columns - List of all columns accessed by the query along with the table, operation, and index used.

The best part of this is that you can zoom in and zoom out SQL query execution plan which lets you to view your plan in a glance. Its definitely lot better than SSMS plan viewer.

You MUST HAVE .NET 4.0 PRE-INSTALLED to install and use the Plan Explorer. Download .NET 4.0 here.
SQL Sentry Plan Explorer x64
SQL Sentry Plan Explorer x86
SQL Sentry Plan Explorer Documentation
SQL Sentry Plan Explorer Change List

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If you want detailed description , please check here.

How to write your custom role provider in ASP.NET : Role provider for oracle

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 08:44:00 +0000

Did you ever have to get the user membership information / Role information from a custom table in a database other than ASPNET SQL db ... Something like you want to get the information about user role from a userinfo procedure !!

There are two primary reasons that might make you look at creating a custom role provider.

* You need to store role information in a data source that is not supported by the role providers included with the .NET Framework, such as a teradata database, an Oracle database etc...

* You need to manage role information using a database schema that is different from the database schema used by the providers that ship with the .NET Framework. E,g May be your company uses a custom schema for role authorization..

So how difficult is it to write your own custom role provider in ASP.NET ??

Believe me its as easier as drinking a glass of water :)....A Custom RoleProvider inherits from the abstract base class RoleProvider and has a number of optional methods and properties that can be overrriden.

Follow the steps below to create your own custom role provider !!

1. Add a new class to your project and name it as Something like "CustomRoleProvider".
2. Make sure you inherit the class from Abstract class Role Provider.

public class CustomRoleProvider : RoleProvider
{
///

/// This method will override the getrolesforuser method in roleprovider and do the custom implementation
///

///
///
public override string[] GetRolesForUser(string username)
{
List<string> roles = new List<string>();
//Write your own implementation and add roles returned by your methond to role array
return roles.ToArray();
}
public override void AddUsersToRoles(string[] usernames, string[] roleNames)
{
throw new NotImplementedException();
}

}

You can choose the methods for which you want to implement in the role provide class. Now your Custom role provider class is ready. Now you need to modify your web.config.

3, You need to enable the custom role provider and let your application know that the Custom role provider is its default role provider. So please add the following section to your web.config in <system.web> section.

<roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="RapidRoleProvider" cacheRolesInCookie="true"
cookieName="AppRoles"
cookieTimeout="20"
cookiePath="/"
cookieRequireSSL="false"
cookieSlidingExpiration="true"
cookieProtection="All">
<providers>
<clear/>
<add name="RapidRoleProvider" type="CustomeRoleProvider"/>
providers>
roleManager>

If you are using namespace in your web application, make sure you give full directive of the class location in type ... Namespace.ClassName ....

You can see that we are caching the roles in a protected cookie which expires periodically. Once you set Cacherolesincookie = true , your role provider will not reach your datbase everytime user requests for a resource. Instead it checks in the cookie and fetches the result fastly. The advantage is the improvement in performance of the application.

4. Now you are done with your custom role provider and you are ready to use it.. Lets make a small test using declarative security attributes. Lets take some page which is only accessible to user role "Normal".

[PrincipalPermission(SecurityAction.Demand, Role = "Normal")]

public partial class Default : System.Web.UI.Page

{

// ...

}

When a user tries to access the above page, the GetRolesForUser Method in CustomRoleProvider will be called to verify the user is assigned to the “Normal” Role. If so, the page works fine. If not, a SecurityException will be thrown, not allowing the page to be viewed.

Now your role provider works fine.So you can enable security trimming on your sitemap and implement role based security in your application.

If you have any doubts / Questions, please feel free to leave your comment.

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Query String Encryption using HTTP Module : ASP.NET Security

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 16:06:00 +0000

Most of times we tend to pass information between different web pages in the application with the help of query string. However query string offers direct visibility to the end user about the parameters your page might be expecting. If some one modifies your query string and pass the information to the page , it could become a potential security threat.

/technade.aspx/ID=123&Query=select

There are lot of ways you can normally encrypt your query string. But most of them don't help you in encrypting your query parameter. They only encrypt your values. However if someone tries with different algorithms, it could again lead to a security breach unless you did some very good exception handling.

/technade.aspx/ID=s1kokkkh1kjn&Query=kjoiujooijoi

If you encrypt your query string, everytime you want to access in your values, you have to decode it and access it. If you had already written some code, there is a great impact that you will have to adapt your code after the implementation. What if there is a way where you display in encrypted format to the user but for the code its still the same ?

What I mean is :

The user sees this

?Technade=VXzal017xHwKKPolDWQ

while your code sees

ID=123&Query=select and accesses it through Request.querystring["ID"]....

How to encrypt your query string in ASP.NET with the help of HTTP Module ?

Before we dive in, let me explain you what this HTTP module is !!

HTTP modules are one among the series of extensible objects that could be initiated by ASP.NET runtime to process a request. They are filters that can pre and post-process requests as they pass through the HTTP pipeline Many of the services provided in ASP.NET are exposed as HTTP modules esp the ones related to security.

So How do we use HTTP module for encrypting and decrypting query strings ?

Download the source code for the file here.

The source file in the above link contains the code for encryption and decryption of the query string.

How to use it ?

Include the file in your project and change the namespace accordingly.
Once you included the file in your project, please add the following tag to your Web.config in your section.

<httpModules>
<add name="EncryptDecryptModule" type=" Technade.Web.Core.Application.EncryptDecrypt"/> httpModules>
Make sure that you included correct type in the above line.

Thats it.. You are done . Now all the query string in your application will be automatically encrypted. Sometimes you may want to enable/disable query string encryption manually. The source code in the file does have the provision of enabling and disabiling query string encryption.

You will find the following line in the source code.

// Encrypt the query string and redirects to the encrypted URL.
// Remove if you don't want all query strings to be encrypted automatically.

string encryptedQuery = Encrypt(query);

Remove the line and the query strings will not be automatically encrypted. Instead you will have to call everytime manually as below whenever you want .

string querystring = EncryptDecrypt.Encrypt( "ID=123&query=select" );

But the decryption is automatic as it always checks for the encryption key that is appended before the query string in the code. So if the encryption key exists ,it will decrypt or else it will let it remain as it is. The file has been documented to a good extent. So it should not be too difficult for you to understand how it works.

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Session handling using facade design pattern : ASP.NET web development

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:43:00 +0000

I work with a team of x developers and I always see problems with the usage of session variables in the application. It introduces bugs in the application which can not be traced by Unit testing and may be not with any kind of testing that happens before deployment :). They surface only when application is deployed in production and its very difficult to trace such bugs which turns out to be a expensive. So how to best deal with session management ?

Let me give a small idea of how this session work. To store information that is specific to a user session , ASP.NET provides the HttpSessionState class to store session-state values. An instance of the HttpSessionState class for each HTTP request is accessible throughout your application using the static HttpContext.Current.Session property. Access to the same instance is made simpler on every Page and UserControl using the Session property of the Page or UserControl.

The HttpSessionState class provides a collection of key/value pairs, where the keys are of type String and the values are of type Object. This means that Session is extremely flexible and you can store just about any type of data in Session. You can store any Type in session variable and cast it back where ever required. This also brings a new problem of people not doing Type checks. They use the session key repeatedly instead of reusing and also store everything in sessions. When I want to see all the sessions used in my code in one place, I could never find them. To deal with all these things, we use a pattern called Facade pattern.

What is Facade design pattern ?

A facade is an object that provides a simplified interface to a larger body of code, such as a class library. A facade can:

* make a software library easier to use, understand and test, since the facade has convenient methods for common tasks;
* make code that uses the library more readable, for the same reason;
* reduce dependencies of outside code on the inner workings of a library, since most code uses the facade, thus allowing more flexibility in developing the system;
* wrap a poorly-designed collection of APIs with a single well-designed API (as per task needs).

With this pattern, we can build simplified interfaces that points to different areas of complex code structure.

So How to we use this facade to do organized session management in our application ?

We make developers to only access the HttpSessionState from within one single static class in your application - the facade. There must be no direct access to the Session property from within code on pages or controls, and no direct access to HttpContext.Current.Session other than from within the facade.

All session variables should be exposed as properties of the facade class which gives us extra control over the different session variables used with in the application.

It also ensures the following :

Strong typing of what gets put into session variables.
No need for casting in code where session variables are used.
All the benefits of property setters to validate what gets put into session variables (more than just type).
All the benefits of property getters when accessing session variables. For example, initialising a variable the first time it is accessed.

An Example of Facade Class :

public static class SessionVars

{

///

///
///

///
///
///

internal bool SetHttpSessionObject(string key, object value)
{
bool writtenAck = false;
if (IsSessionValid)
{
HttpContext.Current.Session[key] = value;
writtenAck = true;
}

return writtenAck;

}

///

///
///

///
///

internal object GetHttpSessionObject(string key)
{
return IsSessionValid
? HttpContext.Current.Session[key]
: null;
}
///

///
///

public bool IsApprover
{
get
{
bool IsApprove = false;
object IsApproverVal = GetHttpSessionObject("IsApprover");
if (IsApproverVal != null)
{
IsApprove = bool.Parse(IsApproverVal.ToString());
}

return IsApprove;
}
set
{
SetHttpSessionObject("IsApprover", value);
}
}
///

///
///

public string UserID
{
get
{
string UserIDval = "";
object UserVal = GetHttpSessionObject("UserID");
if (UserVal != null)
{
UserIDval = UserVal.ToString();
}
return UserIDval;
}
set
{
SetHttpSessionObject("appUserID", value);
}
}
}

The above class demonstrates how we can define session variables in facade and make use of

HttpContext.Current.Session

Now let me explain how to make use of these properties in your Code which is quite simple.

string VirUser = SessionVars.UserID

This gives you the advantage of not casting the object everytime you use it. Also it does help you in isolating the internal implementation from the rest of your code.

Next time you choose to implement session in different way, All you have to do is change it here but not everywhere. Cool Ain't it ?

The technique seems quite simple but believe me , it has lot of added advantages for you.

The implementation of Session can be again separated from this class through the usage of partial class and could be made really isolated.I will talk about Singleton and Partial class integration in my next article. Stay tuned :)..

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How to find post back element id in asynchronous postback ( UpdatePanel ) ? ASP.NET

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 12:09:00 +0000

A day before I was playing with some functionality where I had to get the id of the element which caused the postback. If its a normal postback done with some control. We can retrieve the postback element with the code below.

string controlID = Page.Request.Params["__EVENTTARGET"];

If we use a UpdatePanel on the page, and if its a asynchronous postback with some control inside the Content template of Update panel, you will observe that EVENTTARGET parameter will be blank. So How to get the postback element id in asynchronous postback caused by Updatepanel in ASP.NET ?

Please use the function below to get the Async postback element id.

///

/// This function retrieves the ID of the control that caused the asynchronous postback.
///

///
public string GetAsyncPostBackControlID()
{
string smUniqueId = ScriptManager.GetCurrent(Page).UniqueID;
string smFieldValue = Request.Form[smUniqueId];

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(smFieldValue) && smFieldValue.Contains('|'))
{
return smFieldValue.Split('|')[1];
}

return String.Empty;
}

Hope it helps.

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Y.S.Jagan - Are you crazy ?

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 09:20:00 +0000

Y.S.Jagan Mohan Reddy - Son of former Chief Minister late Dr Y.S.Raja Sekhara Reddy , has made all his efforts to become the Chief Minister of the state (Andhra Pradesh) but he gained nothing...What went Wrong with Jagan ? Why could'nt he become a good leader or atleast a good politician ?

Jagan's political journey is quite short with most of it being governed by his father late YSR . Jagan started his political career in 2004 ( where he campaigned for congress in the elections ) and got himself projected as a leader for the youth wing of congress (We know how weak the wing is :)). He was elected as a Member of Parliament from Kadapa Constituency in 2009 (Where his family has a good foothold) and started his life as a active politician.

Other than this Jagan had no significant achievements being a politician. Jagan built up a business empire with the help of the power his father and he had in a very short span of time. Jagan started Sakshi Group, held a good amount of share in Bharati Cements, Sandoor Power, Jagathi Publications, Brahmani steels and other industries..... With the help of his fathers power, Jagan could get the Market capitalization of these companies increase in such a way that no other Corporate house could do in the last century... From what we hear from sources , Jagan is worth 1,00,000 crore approximately (20 Billion USD ??)... With the help of power, Y.S Raja Sekhara Reddy and his family acquired massive wealth in a short span of 5 years (Unbelievable but true..)..

After his fathers demise, Jagan didn't want to loose the power as managing his businesses and wealth will become difficult for him. Rather than feeling sorry about his fathers death, Jagan started crawling for the post of Chief Minister right from the day of his fathers death. He got signatures of the MLA's of the party so that he can show that he has strength to become the chief Minister..

This was Jagan's first mistake in the eyes of Higher Party authorities. From then on, Jagan tried all the ways in projecting himself as eligible candidate for the post of Chief Minister. He showed his interest in going to any extent to become a chief Minister. Being the son of a politician , Jagan should had understood that its not only the acceptance of MLA's but the acceptance of people that matters the most. Jagan should had got himself publicized as a leader of the masses just like his father with the help of media houses rather than appearing as a person crawling for power. Jagan should had taken a stand to wait until he gets the right projection as Peoples leader.

Jagan's aggressive ways to become CM has gained some negative image among the other communities. Jagan started with pleading the High Command but ended up in forcing them to make him the Chief Minister. To Silence Jagan, When Rosaiah was made CM, Jagan and his supporters did everything to not let Rosaiah continue in office. They portrayed him as a incapable person although he did a very good job in getting back states treasure into a acceptable position. Y.S.Raja Sekhara Reddy's schemes caused unacceptable damage to states treasury (Thats a complete different story :) ).

Jagan also planned a series of public events across the state under the Name " Odarpu Yatra"
where he wanted to meet people (who had been reportedly said to have committed suicide in response to his fathers death). The real motive was to get himself projected as a successor of his father. He wanted to do it with no publicity to Congress. When the higher party authorities asked him for the same, he started publicizing that the higher command is stopping him from doing this Odarpu Yatra. In last time elections, YSR got some of his relatives and close acquaintances elected as MLA's. Most of them were being supported by YSR family & Co. financially at the time of election. Jagan made some of them attend his "Odarpu Yatra" to show of his strength and to black mail the high command. Jagan tried to meet Sonia Gandhi again but she made it very clear that he stand nowhere now to become the Chief Minister.

With the inclination of higher command towards some other person even after Rosaiah's resignation, Jagan's aggression turned into craziness to become the chief Minister. Finally Jagan had to resign along with his mother and come out of congress as he could not climb the hill any more..

After his resignation, Jagan started to project himself as a Saviour of government today by saying that he is not going to ask his followers to resign.. but it appears more of blackmailing rather than saving the government. He asks his followers to stay with the government but he makes a announcement that he will roll out a party in 2 months.After that Jagan undertook a Fast for farmers and made 20 + MLA 's (his community leaders and relatives) attend it .

Jagan is trying every option so that he can get what he want. But he never got the fact that beyond all this its the people that matters. May be there are some loyalists of his father who might vote on his name but its not going to be everyone again. YSR with his good strategy and management got into peoples nerve and could win the last election. But who will vote for Jagan (May be some loyalists of his community ) ? What will people see in him to vote for ? A person crawling for power ? A corrupted politician riding on huge wealth ? A bad strategist who could not devise a single idea correctly ? A aggressive crazy person trying to get something he don't deserve ?

But Jagan should know this. Once he is out of Congress, the government will focus on his strengths so they can rip them of. They started to look for the answers to questions such as

1. How he accumulated so much wealth ? How to get it stripped of him ?
2. Who are his loyalists and How can they keep them away from him ?
3. How to retain other leaders from his community ?
4. How can Congress retain its name and get YSR & family co. not being projected as its captain anymore ?

The government needs some of Jagans loyalists today to run. But if elections happen next time , very few of these Jagan's loyalists will win again.

But Jagan might have a alternate plan to look towards BJP with the help of Bellary Reddy Brothers if Congress don't win majority of seats in elections. If Jagan gets even 5 MP seats with the help of his loyalists, he could play a key role at the centre. Thats why he made a announcement today that he will contest as a MP again.

Whatever he might think, but people should think before they vote for someone like him next time. There is a limit for everything and Jagan has crossed it. He don't deserve to be a leader with the kind of attitude he has. He is not going to serve the state. Say No to Corruption People. He is Crazyyyyyyyy..

Everyday changes - From letters to phones

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 05:39:00 +0000

After a long time, I am visiting a village where I had spent most of my holidays in childhood. It brings in lot of memories which gives me a feeling as if I had been living for centuries seeing so much transformation in human life.

There were times when we used to wait for a inland letter from my grandfather which was the only way of communication in those days. I still remember how I used to find lines written for me in the light blue colored Indian Inland letter :)...Inland letters are definitely a relic of the past.

After a decade of communication with letters, we started hearing about land line phone. I still remember how overwhelmed I was when my father ordered our first wired telephone connection. It was a celebration in those good old days :)..It is still a memory where we used to wait for hours in STD booth just to have a 5 minute call with my grand parents.

Then came the generation where we used to make short expensive calls from our home phones. After that the real revolution in Indian telecom has started.

With the advent of change of in telecom regulations, Mobile telephony boomed in India in the last decade. Mobile phone transformed itself from a luxury to a necessity for most of the people in India. It all started with Voice and then made it into every part of life through data services.

We now hear about 3G and other services that are offered through it today. Most of the people are addicted to the day to day activities that could be done using mobile phone today esp internet. Emails .

If we think about the changes we have seen in technology, it seems as if we have been living for generations. But technology changes and revolutions keep on happening. If you have any ideas of next generation mobile phones, please drop your valuable comment.

Pro's and Con's of Mobile phone Usage - Please stay tuned to read this in our next articles.

Google talk with Invisible mode option ( Gtalk invisible Option )

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 09:05:00 +0000

Lot of people use Invisible mode so that they dont get disturbed by people who are idle :).. I am a vivid user of Gtalk and whenever I want to go invisible, i find uncomfortable to open browser and set my status to invisible. I always wondered why Gtalk dont have a invisible option. I made a search to see whether any such plugin does exist. I came across something interesting. We have another version of Gtalk which does have a invisible option. It seems Google tried it in labs but didnt release it ( Probably Google might had lost interest in gtalk..They have lot of failures these days... )

Google talk labs edition

The user interface also looks pretty much cool. You have a small login window which looks as it is in Gmail. Chats will open in tabs in main window which I didnt like that much. I could not find any option to pop out the chat tab from main window. The tray menu has individual options for launching Gmail,Calendar and Orkut.

Strange thing I found is that I dont have many options when it comes to settings. The only option that we have are for enabling notifications and for making Gmail as default client.

Its a pretty much try in labs for making Gtalk as a peppy client but they still have long way to Go :)...

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Do we need Telangana ?

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:10:00 +0000

The state of Andhra Pradesh is burning out with lot of agitations from so called Telangana activists. For those readers who dont understand what is this Telangana , lemme give you small overview.

Telangana means "land of Telugu people". It consists of the Telugu speaking parts of the princely state of Hyderabad. The region lies on the Deccan plateau to the west of the eastern ghat range, and includes the northwestern interior districts of Warangal, Adilabad, Khammam, Mahabubnagar, Nalgonda, Rangareddy, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Medak and the state capital of Andhra Pradesh i.e Hyderabad. The Krishna and Godavari rivers flow through the region from west to east. You can see the marked area in the picture to find the exact location in India.

After India got independence, Telangana used to be a separate state under the empire of Nizam of Hyderabad. But after that the government removed the Nizam and merged Telangana with Andhra Pradesh with a agreement over certain implementations.

History :

1964 : Since none of the agreed upon implementations while creating unified Andhra Pradesh have been implemented, a separate Telangana movement with the support of students and political activists took place. With support to the movement from all sections of people , it lead to lot of violence and deaths of hundreds. But the movement got a beating when the greedy political leaders of the state joined into congress party. Even a separate Jai Andhra movement has started in the coastal parts of Andhra Pradesh. To stop both the movements , the government of India formulated a Six point formula which has been agreed by leaders from both the areas.

The `Six-Point Formula' included
(1) the abolition of Mulki rules and the Telangana Regional Committee
(2) the establishment of a Central University at Hyderabad to augment educational facilities.
(3) In regards to jobs, the state will be divided into six zones, within the framework of three regions, namely, Coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema, and Telangana (Zone V, and Zone VI) with Hyderabad under Zone VI. Each zone should prefer local candidates for state government jobs. However according to GOM, the regions were rezoned with Zone I,II,III Coastal Andhra, Zone IV Rayalaseema, Zone V,IV Telangana.

1990-2004 : Everything started all over again when the BJP government made a promise about separate telangana state formation before coming to power . BJP created other small states Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Uttarakhand. but it could not create Telangana due to strong opposition from its coalition partner Telugu Desam Party (TDP) . Among these developments a new Political Party called Telangana Rashtra Samithi headed by K .Chandra Sekhar Rao (a ex TDP member) has been formed with the objective of attaining separate statehood for Telangana.

2004-2009 : TRS became the coalition partner for Congress at the centre with the hope that Congress will give separate statehood to Telangana. But inspite of efforts from KCR , nothing happened in the entire term. It lead to reelections in Telangana region in 16 MLA areas. But only 7 of 16 MLA s could won the election which suppressed the TRS movement.

2009-10 : KCR started a hunger strike for separate state formation. The central government surrendered this time and the Home Minister made a official statement that the center has no objection. It lead to wide protests all over the state with a Unified Andhra movement from Andhra Side. The center has again to take the word back and it led to a row of agitations from Telangana activists. The state capital received a heavy beating due to continuous protests in the form of Bandh's by the T activists. Even the death of the Mr Raja Sekhara Reddy and the appointment of incompetent Chief Minister Mr Rosaiah is one the main reasons for continuous protests which is causing huge discomfort to working class people .

Why do they want Telangana ?
People do have grievances regarding Telangana but they can be sorted out even without a separate state. Lets have a outlook on the possible grievances of Telangana people. 4 main problems are reported by most of the people.

Irrigation : Eventhough the main catchment area of Krishna and Godavari exists in Telangana, its benefits are mostly reaped by the coastal Andhra with 72.5% of water going over there. Thanks to the canal irrigation systems. Telangana only get 18 % of water.

Jobs: Only 20% of total Government employees, less than 10% employees in secretariate, less than 5% of head of the departments in Andhra Pradesh are from Telangana. More than the loss of jobs, Telangana people lost the representation in government subsequently lost out in the budget allocations, subsidies and attention to their problems. In 1985, Government published G.O 610 to remove/transfer all the non-locals in government jobs in Telangana region, against the six point formula. Besides not implementing these orders after so many years further recruitment of non-locals in the Telangana region is going on. By this time in 1985, 58,000 non-locals have occupied jobs in Telangana region. The Girglaini Commission set up in 2001, came up with a report that around 2 lakh govt. jobs in Telangana region are enjoyed by migrants from Andhra and Rayalaseema regions

Education : The share of Telangana as a percent of the total expenditure of the state on salaries of staff in educational institutions in 2001 is as follows:

i. Primary schools (government): 31.44%

ii. Primary schools (aided): 9.86%

iii. Degree colleges (government): 37.85%

iv. Degree colleges (aided): 21.79%

Budget Allocations: Expenditure incurred on this region has never been more than 25% to 30% of total expenditure of Andhra Pradesh. Most years, funds allocated to Telangana were never spent.

Jobs: Only 20% of total Government employees, less than 10% employees in secretariat , less than 5% of head of the departments in Andhra Pradesh are from Telangana. More than the loss of jobs, Telangana people lost the representation in government subsequently lost out in the budget allocations, subsidies and attention to their problems.

Even if Telangana is going to be created , Are the above grievances going to get resolved ?

No. Telangana is powered by greedy politicians like KCR who dont care about people. The politicians are neither brave enough to take up something in their areas. The reason for backwardness is nothing except inefficient politicians. They never fought for the cause of development. When KCR was a central minister what has he done to Telangana ? But people still voted for him again and again. When you vote for such people, how can you expect development to happen (with or without separate Telangana)? If you say migrated Andhra ites are taking your jobs who is restricting you guys from going to their regions and taking up jobs. I agree that lot of backwardnesss is there in terms of revenue generation and education in Telangana but it can not be sorted out only with a separate state.

May be telangana region can be given more preference by the government from next time onwards. Just asking creation of a separate state for the above reasons is not justified. Formation of the state involves lot of things. Since the capital resides in Telangana region, all the infrastructure needs to be recreated again. But w
ith the present financial condition of the government, this thing seems impossible. Its not just infrastructure, it needs lot of things to be divided. People should understand this before doing some protests.

I dont understand why students are getting involved in this. Only one Osmania university in the region is supporting this movement. The movement is mainly supported by students from Arts departments . None of the engineering students does support this. Only students in Arts departments who join any kind of protest when you pay some money are a part of it ( FYI even a average student will prefer engineering in Andhra Pradesh ). Its just our media thats creating the hype by showing over and over again.

What is your view on Telangana ? Dont forget to post your view as comments.

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SQL server dates in different formats

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:05:00 +0000

Here is the list of conversions that facilitates retrieving date time in different formats in T - SQL.

Replace Date in Convert with your field Name.

'YYYYMMDD'

CONVERT(CHAR(8), Date, 112)

'YYYY-MM-DD'

CONVERT(CHAR(10), Date, 23)

'YYMMDD'

CONVERT(VARCHAR(8), Date, 12)

'YY-MM-DD'

STUFF(STUFF(CONVERT(VARCHAR(8), Date, 12),
5, 0, '-'), 3, 0, '-')

'MMDDYY'

REPLACE(CONVERT(CHAR(8), Date, 10), '-', SPACE(0))

'MM-DD-YY'

CONVERT(CHAR(8), Date, 10)

'MM/DD/YY'

CONVERT(CHAR(8), Date, 1)

'MM/DD/YYYY'

CONVERT(CHAR(10), Date, 101)

'DDMMYY'

REPLACE(CONVERT(CHAR(8), Date, 3), '/', SPACE(0))

'DD-MM-YY'

REPLACE(CONVERT(CHAR(8), Date, 3), '/', '-')

'DD/MM/YY'

CONVERT(CHAR(8), Date, 3)

'DD/MM/YYYY'

CONVERT(CHAR(10), Date, 103)

'HH:MM:SS 24'

CONVERT(CHAR(8), Date, 8)

'HH:MM 24'

LEFT(CONVERT(VARCHAR(8), Date, 8), 5)

'HH:MM:SS 12'

LTRIM(RIGHT(CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), Date, 22), 11))

'HH:MM 12'

LTRIM(SUBSTRING(CONVERT(
VARCHAR(20), Date, 22), 10, 5)
+ RIGHT(CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), Date, 22), 3))

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How to enter free text in a ajax asp.net combo box ?

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:21:00 +0000

A day before I had requirement where the user wants a combox box that gives him access to enter free text also inside it. Thanks to Ajax Control Toolkit which is a open source that lets us modify the code according to our requirements . So How do we let the user enter free text in a ASP.NET AJAX combo box ?

1. Download the source code for AJAX control toolkit from here .
2. Once you open the solution, Under Ajax Control toolkit you will find a folder 'ComboBox'
3. In that try to open Combobox.debug.js . If you dont have it , open Comboxbox.js .
4. Now try to find the following piece of code in it and comment it.

if (this.get_selectedIndex() == -1 && this.get_dropDownStyle() == AjaxControlToolkit.ComboBoxStyle.DropDownList) {
this.get_textBoxControl().value = '';
e.preventDefault();
e.stopPropagation();
return false;
}

This code is basically responsible to prevent entering free text when you dont have any item in the list that matches with what you had typed.

5. Now build the solution, add a reference to the dll , add the combo box control to your web page and you should be able to enter free text in ComboBox.

If you encounter any errors, throw a comment.I will help you out.

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How to set date time as text to a excel in DD/MM/YYYY format using ASP.NET ?

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:13:00 +0000

Did you ever try to set a date as text to Excel cell using asp.net ? I had this interesting problem today. The date that I have been passing from my code is something like this '02/06/2009' (dd/mm/yyyy) .But When I check the Excel it appeared as '06/02/2009' (mm/dd/yyyy) . Dates with date > 12 will appear correctly in the excel . I tried by setting the format of cells to dd/mm/yyyy but no luck. So How will we achieve it ?

Solution :

To avoid this problem all you need to do is append a single quote (') before your date . i.e '02/06/2009 should be set as text to excel and you will see the date in correct format.

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Dear Users

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:21:00 +0000

Thanks for reading Technade. Lot of things keep my day busy these days. I dont find much time to write a article on technade (absolutely sorry about it). I will try to get atleast one article posted on the blog everyday in the coming month.Please bear with us in the mean time.

Note : I am looking for guest authors from my niche area ( Technology ).If you are interested, please let me know.

Prerequisite : Sound knowledge of Windows and PC's
Good English Knowledge.

Yours
Subhash V

How to call a WCF service using web service task in SSIS ? WCF and SSIS 2005

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 06:24:00 +0000

A day back I had a requirement where I had to write a simple web service which generates a Excel Report and had to get it executed as a daily job . So I thought of writing a SSIS package which will call a web service . But I am much into learning WCF ( Windows Communication Foundation ) these days .So I thought why dont I create a WCF service instead of Web service !! So I ended up creating a WCF service.

Now the question is Can I call a WCF service using Web service task in SSIS 2005 ?

The answer is Yes you can . All you have to do is follow the steps below .

Before we create a package , we need to make few changes to the Windows Communication foundation host and client so that we can make things work .

Make the following changes to the web.config of WCF host :

There will be a entry called as Bindings in the System.servicemodel tag in web.config of WCF host . You have to change the type of bindings in it as follows .

<bindings>
<basicHttpBinding>
<binding name="BasicHttpBinding_ReportService"
closeTimeout="00:05:00"
openTimeout="00:05:00"
receiveTimeout="00:05:00"
sendTimeout="00:05:00"
maxBufferPoolSize="524288"
maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647">
<readerQuotas
maxDepth="2147483647"
maxStringContentLength="2147483647"
maxArrayLength="2147483647"
maxBytesPerRead="2147483647"
maxNameTableCharCount="2147483647" />
<security mode="None" />
</binding>
</basicHttpBinding>
</bindings>

By default it will be wsHttpBindings in a WCF service . But in a web service it used to be basic Http Binding and web service task has been configured to work only with basic HTTP binding in SSIS 2005 . Since WCF service supports communication over different protocols , we can always set bindings and achieve the required functionality .

If your web service is also consumed by your web application or something , then you need to configure its web.config as below to enable it use the same binding (BasicHttp) which host exposes .

<bindings>
<basicHttpBinding >
<binding name="BasicHttpBinding_MPCService"
closeTimeout="00:01:00"
openTimeout="00:01:00"
receiveTimeout="00:10:00"
sendTimeout="00:01:00"
allowCookies="false"
bypassProxyOnLocal="false"
hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard"
maxBufferPoolSize="2147483647"
maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647"
messageEncoding="Text"
textEncoding="utf-8"
useDefaultWebProxy="true">
<readerQuotas
maxDepth="2147483647"
maxStringContentLength="2147483647"
maxArrayLength="2147483647"
maxBytesPerRead="2147483647"
maxNameTableCharCount="2147483647" />
<security mode="None">
<transport clientCredentialType="None" proxyCredentialType="None" realm="" />
<message clientCredentialType="UserName" algorithmSuite="Default" />
</security>
</binding>
</basicHttpBinding>
</bindings>

If you observe the web.config entries , you can observe maxDepth ,maxContentstringLength and other attributes being set to 2147483647 . This has been set as my output of webservice (Excel file ) was very large . You can remove them if you want .

Now lets create a SSIS package using BIDS 2005 .

The first thing you have to do is setup your HTTP connection using New Connection Wizard .
Now save the WSDL of the service in a local path . You can get the WSDL by using the link you have used as server URL in the HTTP connection manager above . The link will be something like http://localhost/WCFservice/ReportService.svc?wsdl.Save it as [Filename].wsdl .
Now add a web service task from the toolbox of your Business Intelligence development studio ( BIDS ) .
Open the Properties of your webservice task and configure it as below.

Web Service Task Configuration :In the HTTP connection , select the HTTP connection you added above .
In the WSDL File field , give the local path to where you have stored your WSDL file .
Set OverwriteWSDLFile to true and click on download WSDL .
Now click on input in the left side pane .
In the input screen you can select your service and the corresponding Web methods .
Select the required one and go to output option .
In the output screen, you can set output type to either some variable or file connection as per your requirement .
Now click on OK and you are done with configuring your SSIS package to call a WCF service .

Now you execute your task and you can see it working . If you still have any problems feel free to contact me .

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A-Squared Emergency USB Stick - Portable USB Malware Protection

noreply@blogger.com (A Silken Touch) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:45:00 +0000

Cyber Security is a great warfare. There is always a race here between malware developers and security vendors. And by the very nature of the security software development process, malware developers are always ahead of the security software.

Present day malware have a characteristic that once they are able to enter your computer, they try to block you every mechanism, which can try to restrict their evil designs. They will try to disable your antivirus suites, they will change your browser homepages, they will try to modify your hosts file so that you are not able to access the security vendor websites and other forums, they will disable the update process of your security software and things like that.

There are fair chances that if your antivirus definitions are not updated, your antivirus installation will be crippled and handicapped beside the damage to your other applications.

In such a situation, you might need a security tool, which is ready to combat the malware, and is ready with the latest virus definitions.

A-Squared Emergency USB Stick is one such tool. It is a free tool, which from the reputed security software vendor EMSI. It is basically a combination of two security tools.

a-squared Free: With a-squared Free you have got the powerful a-squared Scanner including graphical user interface. Search the infected PC for Trojans, Spyware, Adware, Worms, Dialers, Keyloggers and other malign programs.
a-squared Command line Scanner: This scanner contains the same functionality as a-squared Free but without a graphical user interface. The commandline tool is made for professional users and can be used perfectly for batch jobs.

This tool is specially suited for the cases, when the GUI interface of your installed antivirus gets disabled and you cannot use it for any meaningful purpose. A command line tool is very useful in such a situation.

[Download A-Squared Emergency USB Stick]

[This is a Guest Post from Silki Garg, who enjoys writing about Internet and PC Security Issues. Check out her latest articles on ClamWin Portable Virus Remover and Windows Security Options Tool WinPatrol.]

Microsoft announces pricing plans for Windows 7 : 50 % discount on Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (subhash) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:43:00 +0000

Software giant Microsoft has announced the pricing plans for its new operating system Windows 7 .The prices for Windows 7 in United states are as follows :

1. Windows 7 Home Premium (Upgrade): $119.99
2. Windows 7 Professional (Upgrade): $199.99
3. Windows 7 Ultimate (Upgrade): $219.99

And the prices for the Windows 7 full package are:

1. Windows 7 Home Premium (Full): $199.99
2. Windows 7 Professional (Full): $299.99
3. Windows 7 Ultimate (Full): $319.99

The Redmond giant also says that customers who purchase new computers before Windows 7 goes on sale will get free upgrades once it is released . The home basic version of Vista wont be eligible for upgrade. The company also offers customerswho live in the United States and other select markets the opportunity to preorder Windows 7 starting yesterday at a discount of 50 %, which means that in the United States, you can preorder Windows 7 Home Premium for $50 or Windows 7 Professional for $100 till supplies last.

The offer ends July 11 in the United States and Canada, and July 5 in Japan. Customers in the United Kingdom, France and Germany can preorder theirs July 15 to Aug. 14. For all the fine print concerning the offer, click here or here.

The new Operating System , Microsoft Windows 7 will officially hit the stores on Oct. 22.