Various

E’ arrivata la Befana…

Sabrina C. — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 18:31:51 GMT

Sorry for the Italian title but there isn’t a translation for that.

I had no time to read my personal mail account from last friday, this morning, opening outlook I found two messages from Alessandro Teglia of Microsoft and… I fell from the chair … it was the announcement of the MVP Award. So, aunt Yeye has arrived among MVPs. It is obviously something that makes you feel like walking ten inches from earth, it is not something happening every day, to receive an award recognizing your professional competence known all over the planet. So now all it comes to my mind is some sort of an Oscar speech, of course it would be ridiculous, so thanks to the MVP program people at Microsoft to acknowledge my 23 years of work with Microsoft technologies, a job that is still exciting and gripping as on my first day in front of an IBM XT trying the DOS commands to see how they work while reading the Operating System Manual.

P.s. This:

is a Befana.

She brings candies to the good kids in Italy on January 6th and brings Carbon to the bad kids.

Moving a Team Foundation Server 2010 from a domain to another

Sabrina C. — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 07:23:03 GMT

This is the list of what we did a couple of weeks ago in my organization, moving our development TFS from a domain to another domain, I write it here in case someone else needs it and of course to find it out if I ever need this again.

First thing to do is read carefully the TFS documentation on this matter, starting with the MSDN document titled Move Team Foundation Server from One Environment to Another and reading carefully what to do in your specific case. Our move was the simplest one, We needed to move Our Single Server from domain XXX to domain YYY without changing anything.

The first thing we did was a full backup of all the TFS databases from our SQL Server 2008. Then, we did a Ghost of the Server Hard Disk, to be sure to have the possibility to Rollback in case of problems.

Then the procedure we followed was this:

We created the same service users we had on our present environment on the new domain, this means, the TfsService user, the SQLService user, the Proxy User and other domain users required by the system and we give them the same passwords.
We opened the TFS configuration and write down on a notepad all user groups and all TFS groups and WIndows groups and users mapped to every TFS project inside our server paying attention to write down everything. This operation is important because the Group and User mapping on project will be cleared during the moving and to avoid developers from “Screaming” and “cursing you” because they’ve lost access to their projects you have to be careful on this.
Another important thing to remember is DO NOT CHANGE THE NAME OF THE SERVER IN THE NEW ENVIRONMENT this is Very Important, because SQL Server 2008 has some problems when you rename its instance under it’s nose. So if you change the servers naming in the new domain, for your sake, move your old servers with the same name and let them Die with that name.
After this, You have to kill the TFS services, you can do that using the TFSServiceControl command line utilities which is located under the Tools folder of the TFS 2010 installation folder.
TfsServiceControl quiesce
is the command to shut down the services.
You also have to shut down IIS if you have sharepoint on the same machine and SQL Server services.
Now you have to move the server to the new domain, Remember to activate a local system Administrator User with a simple password, use a domain administrator with the rights to do so to remove the server from the old domain. Restart it, verify that the services are still stopped or stop them again using the local Administrator.
Remember also to activate the SA user with a password you know or to create a SQL Server user with SysAdmin rights giving it a password of your choice.
Join the server to the new domain. Change the Service users for SQL Server and TFS services to the one in the new domain and start SQL Server, do not yet start TFS.
Then you first need to open the SQL Server Management Studio and log on using SA or your personal Sysadmin, go to the Security folder and verify that local machine Windows Groups have mantained their rights. Then map the new domain Windows Groups or users you had on the old domain and assign them rights and roles on the TFS databases. Remove database mappings from the old users before deleting them.
You also need to go to the Users management of the local Server, and if you created local groups containing domain users or groups, you need to remap the users and groups from the new domain.
Then you need to use the Identities Command, which is one of the options provided by the TFSConfig command line utility of TFS to change inside the configuration database of TFS the SIDs of the Domain Users used to run TFS Services, the utility stays on the Tools folder of the TFS installation. There is an article on the msdn linked to the guide I linked at the beginning of this article that gives you all the informations on how to use it. The command is something like:
TFSConfig Identities /change /fromdomain:olddomain /todomain:newdomain /account:accountname /toaccount:accountname
/sqlinstance:sqlserverinstancename /databasename:TfsConfigDatabase /account:sqlaccountname
If you Kept instance names and user names and passwords identical on the two domains this is a simple routine operation and all works at first shot. So keep clearly in mind, no Server name change, no service user change, no password change.
In the unfortunate case you had to change a service user, there is another command of the TFSConfig utility, named Accounts, you can use to specify to TFS the new service accounts before executing the Identities command.
After this you can restart TFS using the TfsServiceControl unquiesce command.
Open the TFS configuration manager, go back to the User Access and permission configuration and restore for each project the Windows Users and groups and the TFS users and Groups that have been erased by the domain move. With a particular care for the Project collection valid users, Team Foundation Licensed Users whicy you find if your first installation was a Workgroup TFS is no more needed.

After this procedures are completed, you can open a Visual Studio 2010 and attach to the TFS client from a computer in the new domain, if you did all well, the server will respond exactly as it responded on the old domain.

I didn’t speak of Sharepoint, well we are a small team and don’t use sharepoint, but the migration guide gives you all the instruction to migrate also Sharepoint services, so I’m sure it works correctly.

Technorati Tag: TFS,SQL Server 2008

DNN: How to use a page just as a menu option

Sabrina C. — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 13:15:59 GMT

Today I’ve lost about half an hour trying to remember how to create a page on DNN just to use it as a menu option. So I write here how to do it to remember it for the next time :P.

If my previous definition was not clear let’s use a sample of what I needed to do to make it clear:

My goal was to build a Top level Menu named Association which gives access to several sub menus, Who we Are, Our Board of directors, Associates, Messageboard and more.

Association +
            |
            +--- Who we are +
            |               |
            |               + Mission
            |               |
            |               + Board of directors
            |               |
            |               + Members
            +--- Messageboard
            |
            +--- Newsletters

In Dnn to made this structure in menus you need to build a page for each option even if the page is not a real page like Association and WhoWe Are in my structure above.

To avoid that users, clicking on Association without waiting the menu to open and show them the sub items, find themselves on a blank page, what you need to do is the following:

Open Admin ->Pages options.
Click on Association in the list.
Click the Modify Icon.
Open the Advanced Options collapsed section.
Scroll down to the Link URL Section.

Set the URL to a page of your site (like the Board of Directors in my structure), or else build a fake URL (“#”) to keep user on current page. Save changes and you are done.

To undo this, if you need it you have to open the pages section under Admin, because neither the administrator or host has direct access to the page.

Technorati Tag: DNN

Just for fun, if you ever asked yourself why they call them Bugs…

Sabrina C. — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:24:24 GMT

Today we found this nice explanation on the wikipedia.

it was indeed a bug :D :D :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug to read the full article on wikipedia.

And if you don’t know what is a relay, this is a sample, that’s why in 1945 a computer was large as a room ;P;P;P

And if you need a DeBugger…

this is patented :D

Tags: bug, debug

This assembly is built by a runtime newer than the currently loaded runtime and cannot be loaded.

Sabrina C. — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:19:48 GMT

This error is given by the gacutil.exe if you try to register in GAC an assembly built with Framework 4.0 and you are using the gacutil.exe built for Framework 2.0.

The programs I develop don’t register any assembly in GAC when installed on an end user machine, except if there is the need to expose .Net function to a .COM application.

On the development machines instead, all the general purpouse libraries of my organization are installed in GAC, this is made to avoid versioning problems in projects that are using more than one solution, and are modified in different moments of the developer working time.

To register the libraries in GAC we use the gacutil.exe from a Post Build Event, the gacutil.exe has been conveniently copied in c:\windows to have it in the standard “PATH” environment variable.

Trying to register in GAC an assembly produced with framework 4.0 I’ve received the message put in the title and my assembly was not registered in the GAC.

The problem is due to the fact that the gacutil.exe I’m using was the version built for framework 2.0, which works correctly until framework 3.5. (since 2005). After some searches on the internet, where it is told that the utility ships with Visual Studio, I made a dir /s on my c:\ drive and found the new release of the utility here:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools

Copying the new utility and replacing the old one, my assemblies made with framework 4.0 are correctly registered in GAC. However, there is something different from before, the folder where the GAC was until framework 3.5,

c:\Windows\Assembly

is now replaced by:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL

This is completely transparent for us Users, but probably it is the reason of the gacutil.exe upgrade we need to do.
The new version registers correctly the dlls made with older frameworks too.

Tags: GAC, gacutil, VS2010

Some News on TFS2010 and Visual Studio 2010

Sabrina C. — Tue, 11 May 2010 12:01:09 GMT

Considering the number of Innovations, new features, revolutions, and more introduced by Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010, I’ve decided (because I’m the Boss of the Dev team) to migrate our small development team immediately after the RTM become available.

Last wednesday we updated all our components, built and released all our projects, made a copy on development machines of all things contained in the TFS Scource control and started.

The operations we did to upgrade the server from TFS 2008 Workgroup to TFS 2010 were the following:

Backup of all TFS databases
Stop of SQL Server
Phisical copy of all TFS Databases

Having already installed the TFS on a SQL Server 2008 we didn’t have the task to upgrade the server from SQL 2005 but we verified both the Windows Server 2003 Standard OS of the machine and SQL Server 2008 got all the needed patches.

Then, not being rich enough to buy a new server, we went on with upgrade doing the following:

Uninstall Visual Studio 2008, Team Explorer, TFS 2008 and all things connected to them from the server.
Restart and check if there were patches needed prior to install 2010.
Installed Visual Studio 2010 on the server.
Installed TFS 2010 on the server, configured the TFS throungh the configuration wizard, telling it which was the previous TFS database, and some options, like the name of the new project collection for the converted projects.
Installed Team Explorer on the server.

And magically, everything was working.

Simultaneously, we uninstalled Visual Studio 2008 and installed Visual Studio 2010 on the Developers machines, Installed Team Explorer and all was working correctly. Users, permissions and access to the projects were working correctly.

We then spent 2 days converting and recompiling all projects and adjusting some things on builds (all relative to the Setup builds) but we had no big troubles at all.

After the conversion to VS2010 what we developers noticed first is that Builds on dev machines are perceptibly faster and the improvements in the User interface of the Development environment together with a gazilion of extensions let us made imediately our environment comfortable.

If you still have doubts “Upgrade or not upgrade that’s the question” feel free to ask, but that’s our experience.

Tags: VS2010, TFS

DNN 5.3 Skinning and headaches

Sabrina C. — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:59:52 GMT

In the 5.3 version of DotNetNuke, the Skin format hasn’t been changed from the 4.x versions except I think for enhancements, but the skin management has been drastically changed and what was very simple then is now complicated.

Create a personalized skin for DNN is easy if you know how to do it, it is difficult if you never did it before. There is documentation on the DNN site you can download, but the manual gives you many hints but not a real how to do it guide. What you can do to learn it without big troubles is go to one of the skin shops online, choose a skin you like, buy it, download it and install it, then take a look at the ascx files and the css files and try to edit a CSS class here and a Table there and see what happens.

But this is not a post on how to create a skin, it is a series of notes to help you survive the differences made in version 5.3 skin management.

With version 5.3 some fundamental things about skins are changed, and I found this devastating for my way of using DNN and skinning portals.

Skins cannot be installed from the administrator user of a portal, they should be installed by the DNN host user.
So if I sell portals on a single DNN, now my customers cannot skin their portals indipendently they have to ask me to install their skins.
There is however a workaround to this prohibition, a skin or a container package can be installed on a portal as a subfolder on the portals\n\skins or portals\n\containers folders and they appear under the portal skins as it was before. I hope the DNN programmers won’t eliminate this possibility in the future.
Skins now can’t be installed from the Skins management page because they are now DNN Extensions. (I presume that calling extension install functions from a page different from the extensions page is not possible).
Skins are no more a zip file containing 2 zip files (one containing the skin and the other containing containers). The Skin is a zip file and the Containers is another zip file; besides the ASCX, CSS, and Image files, the zip files need to contain an XML file named SkinName.dnn that is the manifest file for the skin or container, it has a specific format and contains informations on the skin, or containers, on which files they contain and on who is the author of the skin or container.
Skins and container should be installed separately as single extensions. On the documentation it is written that old skins work and can be installed. I wasn’t able to do so, installing a skin in the old format gave me error, but maybe it’s my fault.

If you already have portal skins installed and working, and you upload them through FTP as I said in point (2), you can build an extension from it using DNN. Being this operation not very clear I write it here (mainly for myself), to avoid loosing hours next time I need to do it:

Login as Host of DNN.
From Host menu open the Extensions page.
On the Extensions page, from menu or from the link at the bottom select Create Extension.
On the page appearing, you will be asked the following things:

Select Extension type – it is a combobox on top of page already set on the “Authentication System” option, I always forget to update it and because nothing is asked about it I press Next and cause damages. If you forget to set the combo on Skin or Container, you will find inexistent extensions installed, fortunately there is the Uninstall option. I think that if this combo was set on empty or “None” and a FogHorn Hoot played if it wasn’t set by us users when clicking on next step could have been helpful.
Name – here you have to set the full path of the skin in the format (Portals\10\Skins\Business04_org) and it is not written anywhere.
Friendly Name – just as written, a friendly name for your skin (Business04_org)
Description – The skin description
Version – the skin version, now you can version also skins.

Click on next step and pay attention there is not a Back step so if you forget someting you are “fried” (:D)
On the next page you will find many things:
- Owner – for example Sabrina
- Organization – DotNetWork.it
- Url – www.dotnetwork.it
- Email Address – support@dotnetwork.it
Click on the next step and you will simply find yourself again on the Extensions page, but if you did all well, on the Skins portion list, you find your skin with the Modify Icon but without the Uninstall icon, I don’t know why and I don’t ask :D.

Now that your skin (and repeating it also the container) is part of DNN as an extension, if you want you can create a package to install and export it. I write below how to do it because I needed 6 attempts to succeed.

Log on as Host of DNN.
From host menu open the Extensions page.
On the Extensions page, go down to the skin section or filter to see only it, click on the Modify Icon of your skin (the pencil).
In the skin page, at the bottom, appears the link option Create Package, click on the link to start wizard.
First page shows you what you are about to create and shows two checkboxes, leave them as they are and click on the next step.
If you are exporting the skin of a portal, this second page has already wrong data, if you look the first textbox that should contain your skin path, it contains something similar to this:
Portals\_default\Skins\Portals\10\Skins\MyskinFolder
it is clearly wrong, because it adds to your skin folder the Host skin folder.
Update it cutting the initial portion:
Portals\10\Skins\MyskinFolder
and click on Refresh File List link near the textbox.
In the multiline textbox under the previous one, are loaded all files of your skin, verify the names and if there is a vti_conf folder delete the files in that folder, they are copies and produce errors creating the skin.
Click on the next step link, the new page got a multiline textbox with the XML text of the manifest file of the new skin, you can leave it as is or modify descriptions, as a hint leave it as is and modify it after the skin file is created after downloading it.
Click on the next step link, the page appearin has 2 textbox single line with the manifest file name and the archive file name, these two paths on my DNN have the following form:
MyDnn_Portals\10\Skins\nomeskin.dnn
MyDnn_Portals\10\Skins\Nomeskin_01.00.00_Install.zip
They are fundamentally wrong, because there isn’t a folder with this name on my server, leaving them as written produces an error not a skin. It is necessary clear the initial part of the names making them as follows:
nomeskin.dnn
Nomeskin_01.00.00_Install.zip
Click on the next step link and cross your fingers. If in the next page you see a green circle and the following message
The Package was created and can be found in the www.MioSito.it/Install/Skin folder
Going to the indicated folder through ftp or on local folder if you are working on the server, you will find the two files above with the skin and the manifest. and you can install the skin on another portal.
I haven’t yet tried an install but looking at what is written on the manifest file, it is probably necessary to update the base path inside the manifest prior to install on a different portal using a _default to install the skin at Host level.

In the hope to have been able help you avoiding Skinning headaches, good work.

Tags: DNN

Dotnetnuke post update hints

Sabrina C. — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:18:17 GMT

I have just updated my company DNN, it was peacefully working since 2007 with version 04.08, now I’ve upgraded it to the 05.02.03 (74) without big troubles, it has been simple doing it on the online server after a test on a local machine.

WARNING! if anyone as lazy as me needs to do this kind of upgrade, be careful, it is necessary first upgrade to version 04.09.05 and then to version 5 to avoid any troubles.

The links to download both versions from Codeplex are accessible from the DNN page even though not very visible, so search them in the Community Upgrade pages.

Said so, everything was fine after the upgrade, except two things: I have multilanguage portals and the language links disappeared. The second problem which at the moment I haven’t yet solved is that the system icons on the menus have malformed urls and are not visible, as soon as I solve the problem I’ll post an addendum to this post.

For the first problem, after some deep breathing, I found the solution on a forum thanks to Mr. Sebastian Leopold from germany, it is simple but a little bit hidden, that’s why even searching all the administrative pages I didn’t found it.

On the Site Admin menu Select Languages, on the Languages page Select a Language different from the Default one in the upper left side combobox.

E.g. Italiano Italia (it-IT); Click on the Edit Language Link below the combobox and on the page appearing check the Enabled checkBox. The Language links or language combobox Will immediately appear on your pages. Repeat for each language you need and for each portal you need to enable.

Tags: DNN, Languages

Where in the world is the DxCore Plugins directory gone?

Sabrina C. — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:09:48 GMT

Maybe it is just a dummy of the month post but…

I’ve installed the RC of Visual studio 2010 because in 2 weeks I am one of the speakers at a Developers conference and I have to speak of the new features of Visual Studio 2010 and C#.

When I develop things, even though they are just Demo projects I need to be comfortable with my environment, so I tried to understand how to be able to have my DxCore plugins also on the new Visual Studio.

I was using version 3.0.5 (if it works why do I have to upgrade?) but for Visual Studio 2010 I had to install the new Beta of version 10.0.0…

When I finished the installation I opened the Program Files folder and searched for the familiar Bin\Plugins folder, but it wasn’t there so I made it and copied the plugins into it but of course they are not working.

After a few minutes of disheartenment. I started searching around, and finally I found the community site for plugins here: http://code.google.com/p/dxcorecommunityplugins/ and after some more searching around I found out that:

Since version 9.1.1 the plugin folder is: C:\Program Files\DevExpress 2009.1\IDETools\Community\Plugins\ that means: Installfolder\IDETools\Community\Plugins\.

Since version 9.1.3 the plugin folder is: My docs\DevExpress\IDE Tools\Community\PlugIns that means:

Current User Documents\DevExpress\IDE Tools\Community\PlugIns

To avoid my fellows developers to loose two hours just to install a plugin I decided to post it here, in the hope of a better search engine indexing.

Technorati Tag: Plugins,Dxcore,Installation

Who am i

Sabrina C. — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:15:17 GMT

Name:	Sabrina Cosolo
Birthdate:	22/09/1965
Birthplace:	Udine (Italy)
Residence:	Udine

Education

Diploma of Non graduate engineer specialization Industrial Electronics, graduate in 1984 at I.T.I. A. Malignani Udine.
Post diploma refresher courses in structured programming (C language) and Object Oriented programming (C++Language) at the Regional ENAIP institute.
Microsoft Official Curriculum courses to acquire certification as Microsoft certified professional, at Global Knowledge (Milan) and Teorema Engineering (Trieste).
Microsoft certified professional since 2001 with certification on software development, design and implementation of databases on SQL Server and Administration of databases on SQL Server.

Foreign Languages

English spoken and written, able to comprehend and carry on a conversation and translate even simultaneously italian to english and english to italian.

Professional Experiences

1987
Developer, my job was to develop software to process data acquired through electronic timecard puncher clocks, using the first chip cards developed.
1988/89
Analyst and developer, my job was to design and develop the firmware to manage the electronic timecard puncher clocks and the read and write of data on the chip cards.
1989/90
Analyst and developer, my job was to develop vertical softwares to process and store data on databases in single pc systems.
1990/2000
Analyst and developer, my job was to develop ERP software to acquire, store and process data on a network multiuser system. I also was a supervisor on local area network systems and in charge of tutoring users in the process of learning the use of the ERP software we produced. Installing and mantaining Servers and PC was also part of the job. at that time everyone knew everything on our customers Information technology systems.
2000/2004
Analyst and developer, my job was to design and develop vertical software application made to integrate customer specific data processing needs with the general purpouse ERP systems used for accounting, warehouse and production management. The vertical softwares made many different jobs, some of them are: Connecting Production Management and ERP exchanging data in different formata; Integrate customer specific data not managed by the ERP system but needed by the company; Process data to build reporting systems for management team usage.
I was also in charge of tutoring users in the process of learning the new ERP systems and the vertical softwares specifically developed.
I've also developed a few ASP and ASP.Net small application mainly on internal or external websites.
2004/now
Project manager, analyst and developer, my job was and is to develop software made to acquire, process, store accounting data, production data, performance data, and documents. Obviously there is not a single all purpouse software.
We developed a Warehouse and production statistics management software, able to supply value added services to production managers and warehouse managers to be able to access all informations they need on past, present and future of the goods they manage. It is working since 2006.
We are currently developing a knowledge management platform which is able to store and made available to users all documents issued from the company or received from the company automatically classified through company business rules created and managed by the companies managers with the help of our consulting division.
We have also developed and already installed and tested a Management Reporting system which is able to collect, process and made available to the company managers all balance sheets and performance data, generate consolidated balances and give a wide variety of reports to satisfy the needs of decision makers.
I am also responsible for the design and maintenance of the Databases used by the applications we develop and the DBA on several of our customers SQL Servers

Programming languages known and used in chronological order

Assembler on Motorola family x80 (z80,64180 etc) microprocessors.
C - on firmware development platform for x80 processors.
DBIII on proprietary platform.
DBIII on Clipper.
C – on Microsoft development platforms from 2.0 to 7.0
C++ - on Microsoft VisualStudio 6.0 development platform
Visual Basic - on Microsoft VisualStudio 6.0 development platform
Visual Basic for Applications - on Microsoft Office development platform
Javascript on web development in HTML and ASP
Visual Basic - on ASP development platform
Visual Basic .NET - on Microsoft Visual Studio .NET development platforms for development of Windows Froms and ASP.Net applications.
Visual C# .NET - on Microsoft Visual Studio .NET development platforms for development of Windows Froms and ASP.Net applications.

Development systems known and used in chronological order

C Compiler and Microprocessor emulator for motorola - 64180
Clipper compiler for Database applications.
Microsoft C Compilers from 2.0 to 7.0
Visual Studio 6.0
Visual Studio professional 2003
Visual Studio professional 2005
Visual Studio professional 2008
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2008
Visual Studio Team System 2008
Visual Studio 2010
Team Foundation Server 2010

Markup languages known and used to develop applications

HTML
XML
XSLT
CSS

Operational Systems known and deeply used through the years

MS-DOS (da 2.0 a 6.x)
Windows 3.x
Windows'95
Windows'98
Windows ME
Windows 2000 professional
Windows XP professional
Windows 2003 Server
Windows Vista
Novell Netware da 2.x a 4.x

General purpouse applications known and used through the years

Microsoft Word da 2.0 a 2007
Microsoft Excel da 1.0 a 2007
Microsoft Powerpoint da 2000 a 2007
Micrographics Designer
Frontpage da '97 a 2000
Internet Explorer 3.x and following
Photoshop 5.5 and following
Axialis Iconworkshop 5.0 and following
Macromedia Dreamweaver 3.0 and following
Microsoft Expression Web 1.0 and following
Microsoft Groove

Interests and hobbies

Cinema, Pop music, Folk music, English language, Irish Gaelic, webs, blogs and hypertext language games. Sports: Wu Shu.

Tags: Info