The world between the Sanders Family and IT!
Just a friendly helpful tip - if you are using LINQ and have, for example, a list of objects, you can use the OrderBy() method to order it. But in order to order it by additional column criteria, use the following:
listView.DataSource = myList.OrderBy(i => i.Field1).ThenBy(i => i.Field2);
Additionally, the OrderByDescending() and ThenByDescending() methods also exist to assit you.
This is to help out anyone that receives the following error with Microsoft Exchange 2007. When you are in the Exchange Management Console, and click Toolbox and Queue Viewer, the following error is displayed:
MMC cannot open the file {Exchange Install Folder}\Bin\Exchange Queue Viewer.msc.
This may be because the file does not exist, is not an MMC console, or was created by a later version of MMC. This may also be because you do not have sufficient access rights to the file.
To resolve, assuming you have the proper authority, delete the following file:
C:\Documents and Settings\{yourusername}\Application Data\Microsoft\MMC\Exchange Queue Viewer
I’ve been a huge fan of LINQ to XML. So I have been trying to have a ASP.NET ASMX Web Service with several WebMethods return XElements. You cannot return the XDocument as it is not serializable. However, XElements are. But, in my experimentation, after having a few XElements returned, I receive an IllegalOperationException: Cannot use wildcards at the top level of a schema.
Here is an example of what I was trying to do:
using...
namespace WebServiceTest
{
public class WebServiceTest : WebService
{
[WebMethod]
public XElement OhHai()
{
return new XElement("OhHai");
}
[WebMethod]
public XElement GetCheezburger()
{
return new XElement("ICanHasCheezburger");
}
[WebMethod]
public XElement Errored()
{
return new XElement("KTHXBYE");
}
}
}
I have attempted this on three different computers with Visual Studio 2008. All behave correctly with one or two, but usually when adding the third, I get the exception. If I change the third to return something else, it works fine. Very strange. Obviously it’s some kind of bug on the .NET side of the world. I guess it still is best to return an XmlNode or even a string (but can sometimes be unpredictable)…
One last note for you beginners to LINQ to XML. When using XElements or XDocuments, you have really a lot at your disposal to convert this to something else. You can use the CreateReader or CreateWriter methods, ToString works, etc. My preferred method, however, is calling the WriteTo method. This allows the XML as it should be represented to be output flawlessly every time.
I was trying to install my networked color-laser printer on my daughter’s laptop this weekend. She is running Vista Ultimate, my printer is a Dell 3110cn Color Laser, and it is connected and shared via Windows 2003 R2 server.
My laptop connected to the printer fine as a network printer, but her computer kept throwing the following exception:
Windows cannot connect to the printer. Operation could not be completed (error 0×000003e3).
The resolution was the following:
I hope this helps any who struggle with this annoyance.
So I was discussing iPhone apps with my friend R&B. I was telling him I still haven’t settled on the next big iPhone-app-money-making-scheme. He was saying his were some pretty awesome ideas - so we started joking around.
After further thought, here would be my top 10 iPhone apps necessary for world domination:
Boy do I have stories about this one…
I remember the day that our company chose to use SalesForce.com (SFDC) as our CRM for lead management. Basically they wanted to get rid of our old back-end system and “upgrade” to a web version with a new supplier. After a brief protest from research in a past life around SFDC, I reluctantly accepted the task to work with them.
It started off fantastically. We met with two very promising people. One was an architect and one was a configuration expert. We met with our business users and mapped out how we would exchange XML data. Our task was ridiculously simple - to have a common lead schema for vendors to submit leads to SFDC’s API. Then their API would do its magic to place the lead in the correct place(s). Then, at a later time, when our sales agent wanted to quote a lead on a product, they (SFDC) would submit the selected lead’s data to our web handler that starts the sales process with our transactional system.
Let’s talk about the leads CF: SFDC explained they don’t have a web API for leads. But they didn’t mention it up front. They mentioned it late into the project. Instead they sub-contracted some no-name company by a guy named Server-On (<- that isn’t anonymized, it really sounded like he was Server On) to write a C# web service project that talked to their API, because we wouldn’t be able to comprehend it. Once I learned of this, I laid the rules for 3rd-Party work. This included fixing code analysis warnings (some could be suppressed - we weren’t Nazi’s) and writing unit tests (80% coverage - sorry Phil Haack). Well they had us attend a WebEx conference to see what they had done. I was incognito as Vic Romano and my lead was Kenny Blankenship. There had not been any attempt at checking, let alone fixing, code analysis errors. They did have unit tests! It consisted of one class named {Something}Test that called another class with some made up variables. And it only called one or two methods in total. Nice… So we pulled Presley off of his failling Callidus project to write a web service that validates and transforms (novel ideas right?) our vendors’ submitted lead data and submits them to the SFDC’s 3rd-Party web service. Oh, and at the last minute, I was notified that this 3rd-Party web service will be hosted on our servers.
Now onto the real pain…the web service that passes a product and lead data from SalesForce.com to our transactional system’s handler. They assigned this developer Crumbie. Crumbie was presented to us as a seasoned developer. Oh, and they yanked the architect from us. So Crumbie and my team of three (not counting Presley) were trying to make this work. My lead, Mr. Bitterman was the overseer, R&B was writing the integrations with our transactional system, and Cornhusker was my middle-man, writing all of the integrations between SFDC and us. So it starts off with us having numerous sessions to bring Crumbie up to speed on what we’re trying to accomplish. We find out very quick in the process that SFDC had a terminal flaw in their design. We needed a combo-box that listed our ID-Product name name-value pairs. Easy right? Not so much. SFDC doesn’t support ID fields. All…let me say that again…ALL fields in SFDC are text, not GUID/Int/ID driven. uBersweetness… So then we got past that hurdle somehow, and then Crumbie is pointing his finger at us saying our end-point is giving hard exceptions. Mr. Bitterman quickly gets me and Cornhusker involved, because they can’t recreate the exceptions. Crumbie confirmed that he is sending the XML in the body of his request. I told Cornhusker to introduce logging into his service. I want their XML string logged first thing, then he can do what he wants with it. After doing this, and Crumbie having another exception, we looked at the log. it looked like this:
<html>
<body>
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<QuoteRequest>
...
</QuoteRequest>
</body>
</html>
So the rockstar developer did as told…he put his XML in the <BODY> of the request (ROFLMAO x 10000). Mr. Bitterman quick shot him a lengthy email with links to w3schools.com and the W3C spec regarding XML. He also included references to XSD’s, as Crumbie was submitted XML that was invalid. The email was a masterpiece - it remained on my cube wall for weeks.
After months of this pain, we got to meet Crumbie face-to-face. I asked the begging question, “So how long have you been with SFDC?” The answer, “Oh, about four months now.” Excellent. Just excellent.
And the last pain that comes to mind is that another area of our company inherited a bunch of Java code for their integrations. They must have forgotten that we told them upfront we’re a .NET shop.
In summary, this is obviously a combination of being a smaller SFDC customer (hence the 4-month old developer), them getting too big, too fast and not being able to have quality architecture (i.e. the lack of ID fields), and terrible project management.
If you ever want other thoughts, check out thoughtsonsalesforce.com.
Good times, good times…
I’ve spent the last few days tracking down how to get a ListView to refresh its associated generic list collection which is populated via LINQ to SQL. My UI is more complex than the below example, but you’ll get the idea. I essentially wanted a ListView that gets populated from a LINQ to SQL object. As the binding is occurring, I want it to check to see if the transaction has been voided. If it has, I want it to disable the Void button. I do this check view an IValueConverter. This was working, but after clicking on an unvoided transaction, the button’s IsEnabled property wasn’t changing. And after reading many posts, ranging from using ObservableCollections to changing the ListView.DataContext to changing the ListView.ItemsSource of the list, I still wasn’t able to find a simple solution to my seemingly simple problem.
After much trial and error - I thought I’d share with the world what I did to remedy it:
MyWindow.xaml
...
<Window.CommandBindings>
<CommandBinding Command="{x:Static MyWindow.VoidTransactionCommand}"
Executed="VoidTransaction" />
</Window.CommandBindings>
...
<ListView Margin="0,0,0,0" Name="myList" FontSize="10" FontFamily="Tahoma"
Height="189"
Width="585">
<ListView.View>
<GridView>
<GridViewColumn Header="ID#"
DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=ID}" />
<GridViewColumn Header="Voided?">
<GridViewColumn.CellTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<Button Content="Void"
IsEnabled="{Binding Path=IsVoided, Converter={StaticResource oppositeBooleanConverter}}"
Command="{x:Static MyWindow.VoidTransactionCommand}"
CommandParameter="{Binding Path=ID}">
</Button>
</DataTemplate>
</GridViewColumn.CellTemplate>
</GridViewColumn>
</GridView>
</ListView.View>
</ListView>
...
MyWindow.CodeBehind
...
private SomeDataContext db = new SomeDataContext(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["ConnString"].ConnectionString);
private List<SomeObject> privateList;
...
public static RoutedCommand VoidTransactionCommand = new RoutedCommand();
private void VoidTransaction(object sender, ExecutedRoutedEventArgs args)
{
bool wasSuccess = insert some method that voids the transaction;
if (!wasSuccess)
{
MessageBox.Show("This transaction could not be voided.");
} else
{
db.Refresh(System.Data.Linq.RefreshMode.OverwriteCurrentValues, privateList);
ICollectionView view = CollectionViewSource.GetDefaultView(myList.ItemsSource);
view.Refresh();
}
}
OppositeBooleanConverter.cs
public class OppositeBooleanConverter : IValueConverter {
public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object
parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
{
try
{
return !(bool)value;
} catch {}
return value;
}
public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter,
System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
{
return null;
}
}
Above in blue, you’ll notice that I call the DataContext.Refresh() method. And since it is overriden by the web method that I call in my implementation, I don’t want the UI to update the database, so I have the RefreshMode.OverwriteCurrentValues of the window-level field privateList. This will reset the data, but then you need to get a reference to the ICollectionView of the ListView.ItemsSource and call the Refresh() method of that, thereby loading your refreshed data into the view.
For “Presley“…may where he ended have mercy on his tortured soul…
So I was working as the EBusiness Development Manager at this medium-sized insurance place in Des Moines. We had several projects failing in other areas, and we were affected by some of their pain. But one, in particular, stuck out. We were partners with Callidus to use their agent commissions/compensation system called TrueProducer. My team’s part on the project was very small - we essentially needed to hook our E-Contracting up to Callidus’ web service layer (or so we thought). So I grab my team lead “Joe”, and my analyst “Jane”, and we sit with the Callidus team and our agency group in a meeting about this very subject. After a demo of some poorly written software, we grilled them on capabilities for E-Contracting. Since their head engineer on this project answered our questions correctly, we were relieved and headed back to await the green light.
Weeks later, we get the green light. So we ask where their API/WSDLs are, just like any normal development group would. The response from Callidus’ point person was “Um…web services? We’ll have to get back to you.” So they get back to us and now we’re talking flat files since they won’t have the web services they said they had until 2009 (or later). Oh yeah, and we found out that the legal contract they signed that stated SQL Server 2005 and it was hosted in our shop, basically meant to say Oracle and Callidus’ll host it.
So after hours and hours of meeting with out Agency Support team, I assign my Contract-To-Hire, “Presley”, to this initiative. I figured that the agreed-upon solution just needed to modify existing E-Contracting screens to render a PDF file that could be entered by hand into Callidus. Not the most automated or efficient, but it would do.
So throughout the duration of this seemingly neverending project, “Presley” grew more and more frustrated. Finally I inquired into why. Now, understand that “Presley” and I share a similar sense of humor and I had been his beating post for his frustrations, but rather than share the individual experiences, he concocted the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) pretty accurately for having only been with us for 4 months. I wanted to share it with you:
I was just talking with a former employee of mine. He worked for me while I was at an insurance company in Des Moines, Iowa. He is based in Cleveland, OH. So it got me thinking that I really leaned a lot while I was there (all 1 year and 1 day of my employment!). If you’re in IT - you should heed my thoughts carefully:
So to kick my blog off right, I was reminiscing about some memories from the last year. I really think anyone wanting to leave that IT Third Reich is really going to be better off. The grass may be just as brown where you are going, but you will at least get your weekends and evening back!
Welcome one and all to my pirated copy of WordPress blog! For those of you laughing - you got my humor. Everyone else should Ctrl-Alt-Del right now.
I have lived an interesting life - and want to share that with friends and countrymen! In these blog posts, you’ll catch up on recent events, reminisce on fond and painful memories.
