An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 – Error Locating Server/Instance Specified)

The database project requires an active database connection to load at design time. Probably it uses that to compile/verify scripts. The problem here is Visual Studio is not able to connect to any such instance. Following are few solutions (these worked for me)

1. Make sure the instance to which you want to connect is running and allows remote connections.
2. After performing step 1, if it is still not loading then you may need to start the SQL Browser Service. Make sure it’s running.
3. If the problem is still there, it has to be fixed from Visual Studio itself. Actually database project do not store to which instance it can connect. It’s a Visual Studio setting.In VS2008 go to Tool > Options > Database Tools > Design-time Validation Database > Connection Options. Specify your instance name here like “\SQLEXPRESS”

If the problem is still there post it to MSDN forums

Ankit

1. Make sure the webpart class is inherited either from Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart or System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart
2. The webpart class needs to be declared public.
3. Safe controls entry in web.config file.
4. If you are referring a webpart from GAC (i.e. assembly containing webpart class is placed in GAC) make sure the GAC version is the latest build and IIS is re-started.

- Ankit

My solution for this: Installed SSP (Shared Services Provider) and this problem is solved!
[ Edited:2008-03-24
I got this error while playing with stsadm.exe command
]

1. The Identity Selector dialog box is displayed only for SSL protected pages. Therefore you are required to deploy your application on a Web server and install a SSL Certificate.
2. Windows CardSpace does not work with Self Signed Certificates and will die horribly. These certificates do not have CRL field. It contains a URL that CardSpace will check for the revocation list.
3. For ASP.NET developers there is Toolbox control written by Christian Arnold. Add this to your Toolbox and you won’t need to write a single line of code. Watch demo.
4. When you use CardSpaceLogin controls you must run application over SSL. The application pool also need to be run under Local Systems identify; otherwise w3wp.exe process will not be able to retrieve server’s private key. In such case you may end up with error stating Keyset does not exist. Note: This is not advisory if the application pool is shared with other Web applications. [ Edited: Refer Barry Dorrans comment for more details.]
5. When using Information cards there is nothing like passwords.
6. CardSpaceLogin controls are integrated with your identify providers such as Forms Authentication. For example: If you use Information Card to register a user, his details are reflected in the identify source.

Here comes the purpose of this small add-in. It provides search within history comments and find a particular change-set instead of traversing the whole list. The plug-in goes one step forward and facilitates free text search in change-set fields. For example you can use change-set id, username or even date-time as search keywords!!!

The major steps involved in developing this add-in are:

1. Writing an add-in for Visual Studio 2005,
2. Getting file history from Team Foundation Server (TFS),
3. Look for the selected item in the Visual Studio IDE,
4. Free text search along with the tools to compare two files.

Visual Studio 2005 provides templates to build add-ins in few minutes. Refer www.devx.com for step-by-step guide for building Visual Studio app-ins. Additionally, you can download Visual Studio 2005 Automation Samples for detailed code illustrations with documentation.

Once you have completed the Visual Studio Add-in wizard the IDE generates Connect.cs file and dumps some code for basic functionality. The next step is to retrieve history from the TFS for selected file. Refer my previous post, Fetching file history from TFS to find out how to fetch file history objects from Version Control Server.

Moving forward we need to find out the currently selected item in the Visual Studio IDE. Visual Studio exposes various properties/objects allowing you to query almost any UI controls and get their status. The following code first finds the active window. If it is Source Control Explorer and then looks for the selected item within the same.

The following code is to compare two source code files and show visual difference. There is an API provided for the same.

Once the add-in is installed, it appears in the Tools menu within Visual Studio 2005. Open Source Control Explorer and select an item. Launch the add-in from Tools menu.

When you search for the history of a File, you can also compare it with the local version or the latest version in the source control. These option are avaiable as context menu.

Following steps are required only if you download the code and try to deploy the solution to have hands on with the code.

1. Copy the TFSHistorySearch.AddIn file to %userprofile%\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Addins\ directory.
2. Update the full path of the assembly TFSHistorySearch.dll under Extensibility/Addin/Assembly x-path.
3. Add reference of TFSHistorySearch.AddIn as link to the project.

Download Source code & Installer: TFSHistorySearch.zip ~700 KB
Download Installer only: TFSHistorySearch-Setup.zip ~400 KB

Implemented by: Jagdish.Vasani [at] Gmail [dot] com

- Ankit

C# 2.0 + ADO.NET = LINQ = C# 3.0

In simple words Language Integrated Query (LINQ) exposes the power of SQL queries within C# syntax. This technology along with its tools allows you to connect to SQL database, extract metadata, build typed datasets/classes (using C# Generics) and make you use them along with C# syntax using just two lines of code. And not necessarily SQL databases, it can execute on any collection type.

int[] numbers = { 5, 4, 1, 3, 9, 8, 6, 7, 2, 0 };
var lowNums =
     from n in numbers
     where n < 5
     select n; Console.WriteLine("Numbers < 5:");
foreach (var x in
lowNums)
{
    Console.WriteLine(x);
}

Have a look at Linq Project @ MSDN and 101 Samples all to sense this. Here in this short -n-simple post I’m just showing how to do things for databases stored as *.mdf files and generate wrapper classes.The LINQ preview includes SqlMetal.exe, a utility to auto-generate a strongly-typed C# DataContext class file from an SQL Server 2000 or 2005 database’s metadata with this execution syntax:

$>sqlmetal.exe /namespace:NWind /language:csharp /code:Northwind.cs c:\ Northwind.mdf

- Ankit

• Web services – Definition: A web service is a collection of protocols and standards used for exchanging data between applications or systems.
• Characteristics
• Demo: Writing a simple WebService in Visual Studio 2005 & Consuming WebServices
• Technologies: XML (eXtensible Markup Language), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), WSDL (Web services description language), UDDI (universal description, discovery, and integration)
• SOAP: SOAP is an open protocol specification defining a uniform way of performing RPCs using HTTP as the underlying communications protocol with XML for the data serialization.
• Drilling inside SoapHttpClientProtocol class
• Advantages of Web services
• SOA – Service Oriented Architecture, Four Tenets

Thanks,

~ Ankit

public static IEnumerable FetchHistory(string serverName, string filePath)
{
TeamFoundationServer tfs = TeamFoundationServerFactory.GetServer(serverName);
VersionControlServer vcs = tfs.GetService(typeof(VersionControlServer)) as VersionControlServer;
ExtendedItem[] itemArray1 = vcs.GetExtendedItems(filePath, DeletedState.NonDeleted, ItemType.Any);

if ((itemArray1 == null) || (itemArray1.Length == 0))
throw new Exception(“There are no items.”);

ExtendedItem item1 = itemArray1[0];
IEnumerable enumerable1 = vcs.QueryHistory(filePath,
VersionSpec.Latest, item1.DeletionId,
(item1.ItemType == ItemType.Folder) ? RecursionType.Full : RecursionType.None,
“”, new ChangesetVersionSpec(1),
VersionSpec.Latest, 0x7fffffff, true, false);
return enumerable1;
}

To compile this successfully you also need to add references of following two assemblies found at [VS installation directory]\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\:

Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client.dll

Call to this function should be made as follows:

FetchHistory(“[serverName]”, “$/Project1/Class.cs” );

- Ankit

• Loading XAML dynamically at runtime
• Playing with 3D objects using Viewport3D and make them rotate using mouse.
• Creating transparent and full-screen windows

Let’s drill down to the technical details of above three aspects:

Firstly, loading XAML runtime can be achieved using System.Windows.Markup.XamlReader class. The Load function takes a stream object (containing XAML source) and return appropriate UI control. Actually, it returns the root control in the stream.

FileStream fs = File.OpenRead(fileName);
this.view3D = (Viewport3D) System.Windows.Markup.XamlReader.Load(fs);

Secondly, the class Viewport3D does it all for you to handle 3D objects. Here we have just hooked mouse events that allows rotation of 3D object in all directions. Moreover you can zoom in/out using right mouse button. Thanks Daniel for writing TrackBall class.

Lastly, setting few parameters as below we can make a Window appear transparent and full-screened:

this.win = new Window();
win.Content = view3D;
win.ShowInTaskbar = false ;
win.Background = Brushes.Transparent ;
win.AllowsTransparency = true;
win.WindowStyle = WindowStyle.None ;
win.WindowStartupLocation = WindowStartupLocation.CenterScreen ;
win.WindowState = WindowState.Maximized;
win.Show();

Well, I guess that’s enough for the first WPF post.
Download the source code for sample application: Load-3D-XAML-Runtime.zip

Thanks for reading.
~ Ankit

• the simplest method to write an extension in few seconds (“hello world” example)
• more flexible in term of autonomy to developer for by exposing a rich set of API, that they can code almost everything,
• and the last, limiting them touching sensible data of user.

Well, the power of FireFox lies in more than thousands of extensions that it provides. This could also have been for Internet Explorer, if Microsoft has provided detailed documentation and samples for Internet Explorer when they released IE 5. Over the years Microsoft had always concentrated on the Web development front of IE, not on the extensibility part of it even though providing great ways to extend.

Let’s go through Internet Explorer for writing the simplest extension in just 5 minutes. So, what we want to do? Here I;m showing how to access Html DOM and change it on the fly. All you need to know is simple JavaScript and basic programming concepts. Here are the steps on MSDN that details adding a context menu to Internet Explorer.

1. Open Registry Editor and point it to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet
   Explorer\MenuExt
2. Create a new key that represents the text on the context menu. This may include ‘&’ for keyboard shortcut.
3. Create a blank Html file, say myMenu.html and open it in notepad. Clicking on the new item in the context menu this is the script file which gets executed. Point the default value of the key (created in the step 2) to this html file.
4. Create a binary value Contexts, and sets its value as 0×1. This can be 0×2 if you want our item to appear when we right click on an image. Or 0×10 if it should appear only it some text is selected. These values can also be binary OR-ed with each other.

Next, open IE and right click (as whatever contexts you have set), you can see your new text appearing in the menu. Then we need to handle the event that Internet Explorer sends to the myMenu.html file. This should contain a script block. It receives an event as external.menuArguments. This menu argument contains a document object that is same as what we use in JavaScript to access the html of the webpage. This can be accessed as below:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE = "JavaScript">

// Get the window object where the context menu was opened.
var oWindow = window.external.menuArguments;

// Get the document object exposed through oWindow.
var oDocument = oWindow.document;

// Get the selection from oDocument.
// in oDocument.
var oSelect = oDocument.selection;

// Create a TextRange from oSelect.
var oSelectRange = oSelect.createRange();

// Get the text of the selection.
var sNewText = oSelectRange.text;

// If nothing was selected, insert some text.
if (sNewText.length == 0){
oSelectRange.text = "INSERT TEXT";
}

// Otherwise, convert the selection to uppercase.
else{
oSelectRange.text = sNewText.toUpperCase();
}
</SCRIPT>

One another script is for Orkut users, for which Orkut does not shows images when accessed from images.orkut.com

<SCRIPT>
if ( external.menuArguments.document.URL.indexOf("images.orkut.com") >=0
)
{
if (external.menuArguments.document.URL.indexOf("http://") >=0 )
{
external.menuArguments.document.URL = external.menuArguments.document.URL.replace("http://","https://");
}
else
{
var count = external.menuArguments.document.images.length ;
for( var i = 0; i < count ; i++ )
{
var strSrc = external.menuArguments.document.images[i].src;
strSrc = strSrc.replace("http://","https://");
external.menuArguments.document.images[i].src = strSrc ;
}
}
}
else
{
alert("Ooops...nI work only for images.orkut.com");
}
</SCRIPT>

The above script just replaces http with https
for all images in the Html Dom.

The ready-made setup is available here.

The same can done using C#, but it requires .Net framework that makes it difficult
to deploy. Even you can hide your script in a ‘dll’ as resource and point it in
registry (default content) as follows:

@=“res://C:\WINDOWS\system32\abc32.dll/script.html”

~ Ankit