Using Swift with Cocoa and Objective-C

The imported project “C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Windows Azure Tools\2.3\Microsoft.WindowsAzure.targets” was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.

I searched online but could not find helpful information. I made couple of attempts to fix the issue (reinstalled the Azure Tools for VS 2013) but no use! It kept giving me this error. From the error description it is obvious that the VS is unable to find the Microsoft.WindowsAzure.targets file.

After a while I realized that I had installed Red Gate’s .NET Daemon and this error could be related to that. Saw the following setting on the .NET Daemon menu – unchecking it allowed me to F5 the application without running into that error!

At least now I knew which software was causing the issue. Unchecking the setting in the daemon isn’t the solution; I had to address the root cause which is the missing Microsoft.WindowsAzure.targets file.

On my development machines this file existed under the folders for Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2.2 (C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\Windows Azure Tools\2.2) and 2.3 (C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\Windows Azure Tools\2.3).

The .NET Daemon was looking for this file under C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Windows Azure Tools\2.3 folder! All I did to resolve the issue was to mimic the folder structure for v12.0 under v10.0.

Questions for the Red Gate team in case they read this post. I may be wrong but this appears to be an issue or perhaps I didn’t install the Daemon correctly. What is the elegant solution that would NOT require me to copy the folders? Perhaps the Daemon should just look at the project it is dealing with to figure out what version of the Azure Tools it is using and look for the .targets file in the respective folder under correct Visual Studio sub-folder (v10.0, v12.0, etc.)?

Edited:

I received the following response from the Red Gate support. Hope it helps.

Hi, sorry you had a problem with Demon.

Msbuild paths have changed in Visual Studio 2013 and this may cause some problems for .NET Demon if you have files that still point to older versions of VS or to the old msbuild path. This error happens when a .nuget package restore file points to the wrong MSBuild tools path. In this case, removing your restore files (particularly Nuget.config and Nuget.targets) from your solution and file system, and then re-enabling package restore should resolve it. Similar errors can occur if you have either the PlatformToolset or VisualStudioVersion properties set to an older version, but changing their values to “v12.0” should help.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=41937

This is how the stencil looks in Visio.

After installing the updates, .NET 4.0 Web API project stopped working. Following three errors were reported in the logs generated by the application; this is the same code that was running fine before the updates were installed! Please note that each of the following was a separately reported exception which occurred when the code was trying to open a connection to the database.

• System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
• System.InvalidOperationException: Timeout expired.  The timeout period elapsed prior to obtaining a connection from the pool.  This may have occurred because all pooled connections were in use and max pool size was reached.
• System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904): A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the login process. (provider: SSL Provider, error: 0 – The message received was unexpected or badly formatted.) —> System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (0x80004005): The message received was unexpected or badly formatted

The following errors were found in the Applications event log.

Faulting application name: w3wp.exe, version: 7.5.7601.17514, time stamp: 0x4ce7afa2
Faulting module name: System.Data.dll, version: 4.0.30319.18408, time stamp: 0x52310bef
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000002ca0c
Faulting process id: 0x1c44
Faulting application start time: 0x01cf160933711ff2
Faulting application path: c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\w3wp.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\Microsoft.Net\assembly\GAC_64\System.Data\v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\System.Data.dll
Report Id: b43e16a4-81fd-11e3-9401-d4ae5267f94a

Fault bucket , type 0
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: w3wp.exe
P2: 7.5.7601.17514
P3: 4ce7afa2
P4: System.Data.dll
P5: 4.0.30319.18408
P6: 52310bef
P7: c0000005
P8: 000000000002ca0c
P9:
P10:

Attached files:

These files may be available here:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue\AppCrash_w3wp.exe_1dabd81cc049f8988c7cfa9798cf58f89514c50_0970896a

Analysis symbol:
Rechecking for solution: 0
Report Id: b43e16a4-81fd-11e3-9401-d4ae5267f94a
Report Status: 4

Research on Google didn’t help much because different people received these errors in different contexts and the solutions/tips varied from restarting the computer to changing the way we access the database! We didn’t want to touch the code because this application was working moments ago! There has to be something in the Windows Updates that broke the application.

Painstaking review of the Windows Updates which were installed that day couldn’t result in anything important that would help narrow down to a particular update.

Then all of a sudden, the light bulb moment! I remember seeing .NET Framework 4.5.1 in the list of updates Windows wanted to install but it wasn’t in the above list! So where did it go? It was found in the “Add/Remove Programs” area. Before we could uninstall it, we wanted to check whether that is the culprit. Little research on .NET Framework 4.5.1 lead us to the KB2915689 which talks about one of the errors we were getting!

We tried the first workaround by disabling the Sophos Antivirus which had several BSP/LSP installed on the server but no use; the application still threw the same errors.

The second workaround was to uninstall .NET Framework 4.5.1 and we did just that! Please make a note of the following gotchas (originally listed here) before you install or uninstall .NET Framework 4.5.1

• The .NET Framework 4.5.1 is an in-place update to the .NET Framework 4.5.
• The .NET Framework 4.5 and .NET Framework 4.5.1 replace the .NET Framework 4. When you install these versions on a system that has the .NET Framework 4 installed, the assemblies are replaced.
• Uninstalling the .NET Framework 4.5 also removes pre-existing .NET Framework 4 files. If you want to go back to the .NET Framework 4, you must reinstall it and any updates to it. (See Installing the .NET Framework 4.)

In a nutshell, we were able to run the application again by following these steps:

1. Uninstall the .NET Framework 4.5.1
2. Install the .NET Framework 4.0
3. Update the Application Pool for the particular application to use .NET 4.0 (apparently uninstalling 4.5.1 changed it to .NET 2.0)

How to: Determine Which .NET Framework Versions Are Installed

How to: Determine Which .NET Framework Updates Are Installed

This happens because by default the Full Emulator is supposed to run which needs the elevated access.

You can avoid running the VS under elevated account if you change the Cloud Service project’s Emulator setting to “Use Emulator Express” which does not require the VS to run under elevated account. See below.

You would miss out on few features but this may not be a deal breaker for many developers. See the following article for more information – Debugging a Cloud Service with Emulator Express

Throttling is good because it promotes writing optimize code but it also helps to know the thresholds that define the size of the sandbox that the applications must remain in before the throttling kicks-in. I could not find concrete throttling thresholds and solid guidance until recently.

Microsoft just published some material on this topic; it covers not only the concepts (throttling, governance, etc.) involved in the resource management but also concrete throttling thresholds, best practices and code example. Check it out @ Resource Management in Windows Azure SQL Database

Scrum and XP from the Trenches – Download this book FREE (PDF)

Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both – Download this book FREE (PDF)

1. Things to consider while designing the mobile APIs
   • Battery life
   • Latency
   • Chunky vs. Chatty
2. gZip data, especially JSON.
3. Instead of loading everything in one go, think about loading data on events.
4. Should the application (hence the APIs) be optimized for reading or writing or both?
5. Have caching strategy in place. Cache, not only on the client side, but also on the server side.
6. Granular, true REST interfaces are great but you might end up making several calls to get the data your screen needs. You might have to create screen specific APIs ( the APIs that provide data and services for one screen ) in order to reduce the # of calls made to the server.
7. Pre-generate or pre-process and cache the data that you think the application might need.
8. Offload work to the client.

Migrating a Business-Critical Application to Windows Azure

Building Reliable Background Processes for a Business Critical Application with Windows Azure

Migrating the Microsoft Partner Network to Windows Azure

Using Windows Azure to Implement a Hybrid Application

Caution – This could be a double-edge sword though. I believe that auto-throttling in cloud environments helps promote good architecture and coding practices, hence having a dedicated environment with elevated limits may be seen by some as a solution to bad architecture and coding problems; instead of fixing the code, they might be inclined to throw more capacity at it. Be careful!

Using the F12 developer tools

FailSafe: Building Scalable, Resilient Cloud Services

Great effort by Mark Simms (@mabsimms), UlrichH, and marcmercuri (@marcmercuri).

I also found couple of other sessions delivered by Mark and others on designing and building scalable cloud applications.

• Building Big- Lessons learned from Windows Azure customers – Part I
• Building Big- Lessons learned from Windows Azure customers – Part II
• Resilient Cloud Apps
• Building Big- Lessons Learned from Windows Azure Customers

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/bb671430

Check out details @ Announcing SQL Server Data Tools – June 2013

Get the update here.

Download

Features in action

You can also install the ASP.NET and Web Tools Refresh that adds few new features in Visual Studio. ASP.NET vNext has extensive detail on the new features.

Checkout the following videos to learn more about new features added to the coolest development tool in the world

What’s New in ASP.NET and Visual Studio 2013

Visual Studio 2013 Preview with Soma Somasegar

What’s New in the Visual Studio 2013 IDE

What’s New in Visual Studio 2013 for C++ Developers

What’s New in Visual Studio & Blend for XAML Developers

Visual Studio 2013 for Web Developers- Deep Dive

What’s New in Blend for HTML Developers

Developing Apps for SharePoint 2013 with Visual Studio 2013

Visual Studio 2013 Diagnostics Tools for XAML-Based Windows Store Apps

Diagnosing Issues in JavaScript Windows Store Apps with Visual Studio 2013

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2013/06/26/alerting-and-notifications-support-for-windows-azure-applications.aspx

In order to do web development, you need to understand the following:

Visual Studio

• HTML5 and CSS3 standards and smarts
• JavaScript language features
• Page Inspector
• One code editor for client and server
• Web Essentials extension

NuGet

• Package manager – new way to bring dependencies into the project
• Install and configure in your project
• Handle dependencies and versions

ASP.NET

• Model Binding with ASP.NET Web Forms – Strongly Typed Data Controls
• Web Forms Friendly URLs
• Same routing system as MVC – in fact the routing system houses in ASP.NET but MVC also uses it
• Bundling and Optimization
• LESS editor
• Page Inspector
• async
• async and threading are kind of different
• Client.DownloadStringTaskAsync
• Task.WaitAll – blocks the current thread until all of the specified async requests have completed
• Task.WhenAll – will wait for all of the specified async requests to finish before returning
• “Async” and “await” keywords
• “Async = true” on the page

A logical question comes to mind. SQL Server Management Studio is available and provides lot more features then what is the need for this extension?

This extension is particularly helpful in case of remote administration of databases. With SSMS, certain firewall ports need to be opened which may or may not be possible in certain environments. Since IIS Database Manager runs on the IIS Server, hence the server administrators can delegate database management to authorized users without opening additional ports for DB management.

Learn more about it at the following URLs.

Database Manager

Using the Database Manager

Database Manager for Hosters

Check out upcoming live training sessions @ https://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/RSS.aspx?type=liveevents&culture=en-US

Task “Exec” “C:\Work\Github\………….\.nuget\nuget.exe” install “C:\Work\Github\…………\packages.config” -source “”  -RequireConsent -solutionDir “C:\Work\Github\…………….\ “

C:\Work\Github\…….\.nuget\NuGet.targets(87,9): error : Access is denied.

C:\Work\Github\…..\.nuget\NuGet.targets(87,9): error MSB3075: The command “”C:\Work\Github\…..\.nuget\nuget.exe” install “C:\Work\Github\…..\packages.config” -source “”  -RequireConsent -solutionDir “C:\Work\Github\…..\ “” exited with code 5. Please verify that you have sufficient rights to run this command.
Done executing task “Exec” — FAILED.

The NuGet executable could not be executed during the build process! I had never faced this problem before. Came across few posts on the Internet where others were facing similar problems and had recommended to change certain NuGet settings or to delete and reinstall NuGet altogether. I did all that but no use.

I manually ran the nuget.exe in a command prompt and got the same “Access is denied” error. All of a sudden, light-bulb moment I looked at the properties of the nuget.exe and that is where the answer was! See below the screen shot.

Perhaps this is Windows Server 2008 security feature but the Everyone was allowed only “Read” permission on the nuget.exe; in order for it to get executed, the caller should have the “Read & Execute” permission as well.

Granting the “Everyone” group “Read & Execute” seems to solve the problem.

I would love to hear if you know of a better way to solve this issue. Drop me a line. Thanks.