Colt Kwong Blog

ASP.NET MVP Award and MVC

I still don't have a chance to blog about my personal achievement recently - I got my MVP status renewed on Oct 1! Yes, it's a great news for myself and I enjoyed it so much since 2001.

BTW, I'm very happy to meet few friends this week, including Greg Low and Phil Haack. Greg is a SQL expert and I knew him for years in the space of INETA and online community personally. Phil is obviously a star and I really enjoy his presentation about introducing MVC at local TechEd today (even the session is around level 100-200 though)

(Phil, if you're reading this post, please don't code in front of the audience but simply insert code from snippet next time ;) just kidding)

Activate SharePoint Publishing Infrastructure Feature Failed

In a recent deployment of a SharePoint site, I have to add a Content Query Web Part (CQWP) so what I need to do is to activate the SharePoint Publishing feature. However, I cannot do it because of an "access denied" error that I got whenever I activate the SharePoint Publishing Infrastructure feature at the top-level site.

This kind of issu is not new for me, and I quickly change the AppPool account after a little googling. However, I got another error of "value does not fall within the expected range" despite I made such tweak and execute the STSADM command manually. So finally, I have to re-create the site by using the administrative AppPool, restore the contents and templates and then change the AppPool account to a more restrictive one according to the best practice.. <sigh>

Microsoft HK Technial Support Forum Announced

After several months of "silent" evaulation and discussion among local MVPs and few members, Microsoft HK office today announce the technical support forum and put an icon next to Bill :)

From the previous meeting with Microsoft DPE team and my fellow MVPs, this forum will only be announced in TechEd Hong Kong but now it seems the team is eager to show the latest homepage to Bill. Personally, I'm tire of seeing the bug of the old forum application and looking forward for the upgrade to V3.0, just like the US TechNet Forum. (mouthwatering...)

VS 2008 and ASP.NET 3.5 SP1

With the release of the SP1, I refresh my local Web developer tool this weekend. :)

Also, please check out the VS 2008 preparation tool and install the MVC Preview 4 explicitly.

SharePoint Error: Some or all identity references could not be translated

I create numerous SharePoint sites with the same port number in my virtual machine frequently during envisioning / POC phrase, and I face an error when I try to re-create the same Web app in SharePoint today: Some or all identity references could not be translated. The result from google is not so helpful but I finally figure out that the problem is caused by an old app pool in IIS after reading this post - I need to clean up the content db, virtual directory and app pool properly next time.

Misleading Error Message about Trial Period Expiration in MOSS

A very misleading error message that I came across last week.. 

Trial period of my MOSS has expired? No way.. check out the permission and security settings first.

Microsoft DreamSpark - Free Professional Tools for Students

Just see this DreamSpark program on the Visual Studio home page and it is definitely a good news for students. (Personally, I'm glad to see that this program covers and beneficial to students in China as well :)

Enable SmartPart with AJAX in SharePoint

I just try SmartPart and enable AJAX functionality in SharePoint tonight, here are few notes:

1. Download and install SmartPart (make sure SmartPart is deployed and affect all WSS sites as shown in the last step of the Setup wizard)
2. Activate SmartPart features (either admin UI or stsadm -o activefeature command)
3. Config AJAX extension in SharePoint (otherwise, you will get an "Unknown server tag 'asp:UpdatePanel' " error)
4. Create a AJAX-enabled website and "user controls"
5. Copy ASCX to UserControls folder to your SharePoint app

All developers are recommended to read the blogs from Jan and Michael first of course.

BTW, I saw another error message "This control does not allow connection strings with the following keywords: ‘Integrated Security’, ‘Trusted_Connection’." in my experimental application. After a quick googling then I change (it's the normal practice BTW) to use a limited rights user account instead of using integrated security in connection string and the problem solved.

Provisioning User to ADAM in ILM2007

I just finish provisioning a user object to ADAM from AD today, the process is pretty smooth and below is the first piece of codes that I wrote for the metaverse rule extension in ILM2007. 

// Provision to ADAM
MA = mvEntry.ConnectedMAs["ADAM_MA"];
Connectors = MA.Connectors.Count;
rdn = string.Format("CN={0}", cn);
dn = MA.EscapeDNComponent(rdn).Concat("OU=Alpha Users,DC=ALPHA,DC=COM); 

if (Connectors == 0)   
{       
  csEntry = MA.Connectors.StartNewConnector("user");       
  csEntry.DN = dn;       
  csEntry.CommitNewConnector();   
}   
else if (Connectors == 1)   
{       
  csEntry = MA.Connectors.ByIndex[0];       
  csEntry.DN = dn;   
}   
else   
{       
  LogAndThrowUnexpectedDataException("Multiple connectors in MA");   
}

The code is obviously incomplete, but there are lots of useful resources on the net and below are the links that I read today:

• http://www.developer.com/net/net/article.php/11087_3522101_1
• http://blogs.msdn.com/therabournidentity/
• http://www.topxml.com/rbnews/Biztalk%20Adapters/re-79365_MIIS-ILM-Code-Experiment---Generic-AD-ADAM-Provisioning-Function.aspx
• http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/611d41bf-f4ae-4a2d-8e98-77bc6ee5da1b1033.mspx?mfr=true

If you are new to MIIS / ILM like me, make sure you check out the first article which is extremely useful, easy to read and understand.

IIS Feature is missing during SQL 2005 Installation

This is not the first time for me to see this message, so I think it may be a good idea to blog about it for future reference.

The error message is:

Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) is either not installed or is disabled. IIS is required by some SQL Server features. Without IIS, some SQL Server features will not be available for installation.

Last time I saw this error when I try to install SQL 2005 in my Vista environment. I do have IIS installed in my Vista and I have no idea what's wrong with this error message. (Solution can be found here BTW)

Today, I see this error again in my clean Win2K3 server box. (ha) It is much easier for me to solve this problem because the cause is just because IIS is not enabled by defafult in Win2K3. So I just select and enable IIS in Add/Remove Windows Components then the SQL 2005 installation go well.