Visual Studio Journey

[INTERSOLV][ODBC Paradox driver][Paradox]Network initialization failed.

2012-01-16T13:55:00.000-08:00

If you're seeing a... [INTERSOLV][ODBC Paradox driver][Paradox]Network initialization failed. ... or a ... [INTERSOLV][ODBC Paradox driver][Paradox]Directory is controlled by other .NET file. ... message, you're probably trying to connect an ASP.NET or VS.NET Program to a Paradox database. You've been all over the internet and there is some stuff about not being able to work on a SUBST

Just a Little Question

2011-12-21T14:19:00.000-08:00

Does Microsoft purposely update their sunsetting OS's (like WinXP) with patches that will make them bog down and frustrate people - hoping that they will get so angry that they will run out and buy a new machine? From what I can see, they certainly do! Bryan Valencia is a contributing editor and founder of Visual Studio Journey. He owns and operates Software Services, a web design and

Incrementing a Non Numeric Index in SQL Server

2011-12-20T12:31:00.000-08:00

So I have this client, and all his sales invoices in the old system are either numeric, or they are numeric (1000) with a single character prefix (C1000). We want to auto increment the index automatically, but the autoincrement stuff is not going to work here. So I wrote a function based on this SQL. select 'C' + isnull(cast(1+max( cast(SUBSTRING(Invoice_no,2,99) as int)) as varchar),'1000')

A Generic Error Logging Object

2011-12-06T07:36:00.001-08:00

There are certain tasks that you find yourself doing over and over in multiple projects - and at some point it makes sense to just create a gizmo and re-use it. Here is my logging object that can log messages (errors or just messages) to files and to a database. Enjoy. If you want to log to a database, you must create the data table. Next, add this object to your project (Project-Add New

Insecure Security

2011-11-27T15:33:00.001-08:00

Your password must be at least 12 characters, and include capital and lowercase, numbers, and punctuation marks. It cannot be any of your last 10 passwords. Also, you must change it every 10 days. And, since we all have online accounts at 25 or more websites, all with different password strength requirements, that means that most of us either... program our browsers to remember our

Reinstalling the .NET Framework on a WebServer: No Picnic

2011-11-22T10:17:00.001-08:00

Windows SBS 2003 used as a webserver. Ok, I was getting the same Autoupdate from Windows Update everyday, so I posted a question about it, and was advised to reinstall the .NET Framework as something had become banjaxed. I put this off, because installing the .NET Framework (3 versions of it) had initially taken me hours. But, being sick of the repeated updates, I finally scheduled

Using Return Values From Stored Procedures in C#.NET

2011-11-19T16:44:00.001-08:00

Ok, let's say you have a stored procedure that returns a value. Now lets say you want to test it in SQL Server Management Studio... This gives us a value of 1, as expected. Now if we want to call this from C#, there is a little trick we have to play with Parameters. Note the trick we had to play here (line 19) to access the return value after the procedure runs. At first, I tried using

BindingSource filters: Partial Match on Int Columns

2011-10-18T01:15:00.000-07:00

Recently I had to do a filter on a DataGridView and needed the dataset to filter on a partial match of an integer column. It took me a few minutes to figure this out... if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ticket)) { filter = string.Format("Convert(ID,'System.String') like '%{0}%' ", ticket); } This gives a filter line that looks a lot like "Convert(ID, 'System.String') like %123%" Which will show

Mixed Messages

2011-09-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

I just changed the icon in my application's main form and got this... a success message with the red "Error" (x) icon. Bryan Valencia is a contributing editor and founder of Visual Studio Journey. He owns and operates Software Services, a web design and hosting company in Manteca, California.

TextBox Watermarking in ASP.NET

2011-09-08T13:05:00.000-07:00

This post in in answer to a recent request I got to add a gray italicized hint to the search textbox that clears when the user selects the box. A google search or two revealed that the industry calls that a TextBox Watermark, and it looks like this: There are 3 things you need to accomplish this. CSS styles for the watermarked and unwatermarked boxes. I added these to my main stylesheet.

The Perils of the Fixed Bid

2011-09-01T14:53:00.000-07:00

Here's a stupid trick that new freelance software developers often fall into. You are in business for yourself - maybe part time - and you get a call. Typically it goes something like this. How much will it cost to make a web site? I usually chuckle and say something like "Between $100 and $20million." I have found that people who call for this kind of work don't know what they want from a

DataGridView: Edit Row on F2

2011-09-01T07:48:00.000-07:00

The Problem: The DataGridView control defaults to EditMode=EditOnKeystrokeOrF2. That means that if you're tabbing around and you accidentally hit ANY KEY, you're going to munge your data. One Solution: There is an EditMode setting called "EditOnF2" which requires the user to hit F2 before editing. It's a lot like locking all edits in your Excel spreadsheets. The user is now required to hit

Version Number Fail

2011-08-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

So... I'm building a Windows desktop application and noticed that the version number (after 50+ builds) is 1.0.0.0. So I looked for "Auto increment assembly version and came across this great article. Ok. So if you open /Properties/AssemblyInfo.cs you see the following lines... // Version information for an assembly consists of the following four values: // // Major Version // Minor

Dear Programmers...

2011-07-25T12:45:00.000-07:00

Please wait. When you're making a Windows or Web App I have a few words of advice. Some processes - like complex database queries - take a lot of time, especially over a large network. This gives a user experience where they click a link or button and nothing happens for a very long time. Wouldn't it be better if you popped up a little I'm working... animation to let the user know you haven't

Some Updates Could Not Be Installed

2011-07-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, Microsoft, wtf am I supposed to do NOW? Security Update for .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 and 3.5 SP1 on Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP x86 (KB2478658) Security Update for .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 and 3.5 SP1 on Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP x86 (KB2518864) ... Update: Microsoft advised me to uninstall and reinstall various versions of the .NET framework. Fun. That's 4 hours I'll

Dear Bloggers...

2011-07-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

Would it be too much to ask you to include the DATE on your blog posts? I just tried to debug my SQL Server 2008 R2 problem using a blog post that must date back to 1965. Thank you. Bryan Valencia is a contributing editor and founder of Visual Studio Journey. He owns and operates Software Services, a web design and hosting company in Manteca, California.

Common Sense SEO

2011-07-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

I get this all the time, in phone calls and email. "We can use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to put your site at #1 in the Google rankings..." So, while it sounds good to optimize your search rankings, what exactly are we talking about here? As it turns out, there are 2 kinds of SEO. There is organic SEO, where the Google and other crawlers read the text on your page and index your site

How to make your DataGridView set maxInputLength based on the data cells.

2011-06-10T12:01:00.000-07:00

This tutorial was created using: Visual Studio 2010 SQL Server Express database Visual C# language I found that when you create a database and use a DataGridView, the column lengths for the string columns are all set to max. This is unacceptable, as the user experience will be an error message AFTER they enter all their data and try to save. It is an option to go through the DataGridView

Super Easy way to Embed Code in Your Blog!

2011-03-30T13:03:00.000-07:00

This is so easy I almost hesitate to mention it. There are several code highlighters out there that claim to be able to highlight your source code using a bunch of Javascript. I have found that none of them work, or they are so cumbersome that the cease to save you time and energy and actually make the job harder. That's when I came across http://pastebin.com/. You can paste in your code,

Using SQL Server Authentication on SQL Express

2011-03-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

For most of my databases, I am content to use Windows Authentication for my database access. In a development or small shop environment, it's usually acceptable to let Windows bear the burden of authentication. But if you need to add just one database app that requires a separate login beyond the Windows login, here's how. First a few definitions. SERVER vs. DATABASE SQL Server (in my case

Using Web Safe Fonts in CSS

2011-03-04T11:44:00.000-08:00

.font_test { color: #000000; } .code_block { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: medium; color: #FFFFFF; line-height: 25px; text-align: left; vertical-align: middle; background-color: #000099; } If you are editing the stylesheet in Visual Web Developer, and you access the font-family dropdown, Microsoft shows 3 common web-safe fonts and then

SQL Server 2008 R2 Express

2011-03-03T16:57:00.000-08:00

Three Hours later... What a bunch of USELESS CRAP! For those who lack a life, the text in the box below is... The following notes apply to this release of SQL Server only. Microsoft Update For information about how to use Microsoft Update to identify updates for SQL Server 2008 R2, see the Microsoft Update Web site at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=108409. Samples By default, sample

SQL Server Money Type Conversion

2011-02-22T11:40:00.000-08:00

How to convert a SQL Server money Type to a C# floating point number. The easiest way yo do this is to use the C# decimal type. decimal amount = (decimal)myReader["Amount"]; I had tried double and float, and they both gave me an explicit conversion error. FYI: when initializing a decimal, use this: decimal mynumber=0m; Think of the "m" as "money". In format strings, use {0:C} (currency

Junk Posts

2011-01-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

I have a page on my site that allows interested parties to post questions to my business. Recently it's been flooded with these junk posts. I'm not sure what the payload is, because my e-mailer strips out all the HTML and JavaScript before messaging me. There is one aspect of this that I find somewhat disturbing though. All the posts are similar, but they come from IP addresses all over the

Snobs

2011-01-21T00:16:00.000-08:00

I am a snob. I had to reinstall Visual Web Developer after a crash. I edited a few old web sites, and apart from it squawking at me about my .NET 3.5 sites not being upgraded, all was well. Ok, so I decided to take a peek at my own web site and perhaps give it a fresh coat of paint. So I created a new project. I had some great ideas about the menu bar. 3 hours of tormented editing later, it

2010-09-28T14:12:00.000-07:00

I do not have the frakking time for this! Server Application ErrorThe server has encountered an error while loading an application during the processing of your request. Please refer to the event log for more detail information. Please contact the server administrator for assistance.An asp.net site that has been RUNNING and STABLE for 5 years suddenly REFUSES to execute any ASP classic

VWD 2010: What's Not to Like?

2010-09-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

The primary thing I don't like about Visual Web Developer 2010 is... Bryan Valencia is a contributing editor and founder of Visual Studio Journey. He owns and operates Software Services, a web design and hosting company in Manteca, California.

Easy XML Dataset Tutorial in Visual C# Express

2010-09-07T14:37:00.000-07:00

Create the Data Definition First, create a new application. Add a dataset Right-click in the stripes and add a datatable. Right click the datatable to add all the columns you want. Use the Properties form to set column properties. Repeat until your table is complete. Continue this until your dataset is complete. You can add as may tables as you like. Keep in mind that you are not creating a

ASP.NET User Profiles.

2010-08-23T15:47:00.000-07:00

It totally sucks. Membership data in the ASP.NET database stores user names, emails, and a little other information, but I need to add more... All I want is a few additional columns added to the user's data, like their real name, phone/fax/cell numbers, etc. I don't want to go to the trouble of creating a SQL Server table and managing all the relationships to do this and then creating the SQL to

Server Application Unavailable

2010-08-10T13:32:00.000-07:00

I fought this for a week - there was so much junk info out there. My system config is as follows: Windows SBS 2003 SP2 IIS 6 Hosting a mix of ASP.NET 2.0, 2.5, 3.5 sites When I added my first Visual Web Developer 2010 site using the .net 4.0 framework, These errors happened. Server Application Unavailable The web application you are attempting to access on this web server is

HTML Dropdown for all US and Canada States/Provinces

2010-08-03T12:42:00.000-07:00