WebLog of Ken Cox

‘By Design’? BindingFailure - An assembly failed to load while using XMLSerialization

Ken Cox [MVP] — Thu, 10 May 2012 19:27:00 GMT

Here’s an issue that cost me several hours and I suspect that there’s something in Visual Studio 2010 – and the size of my solution – that’s to blame.

I was quite happily working in the MsmqToWcf example of the WF_WCF_Samples to learn about MSMQ. So far so good.

However, when I moved to my real project I got an exception in debug mode:

The assembly with display name 'Report.XmlSerializers' failed to load in the 'LoadFrom' binding context of the AppDomain with ID 1. The cause of the failure was: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Report.XmlSerializers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

Unable to track down the error in my own project, I went back to the working example and gradually replaced the example code with my own code. Everything worked just fine!

Back I went to my own project and boom! That stupid stopped by debugger again.

A search on the InterWebs shows many people have had this one and it was reproduced in 2005 and filed as a bug in Microsoft Connect. The strangest thing was to see it “Closed as By Design”.

Okay, so Microsoft’s code is probing for a pre-generated assembly and throwing an exception as a binding failure.The debugger sees this and stops.

And this behaviour is ‘By Design’? That’s because if you aren’t debugging it won’t actually fail. How reassuring!

My sense is that since the identical code fails in one big project while working fine in another small one, there’s a timing issue in the code generation. Something behind the scenes isn’t ready on schedule and hundreds of developers have lost valuable time because of it.

Maybe people at Microsoft have such high end equipment (e.g., solid state drives) that they can’t reproduce these types of anomalies?

Anyway, as the guy says on TV, “JUST FIX IT”.

Ken

Visual Studio 11 UI Update - Improvements in RC

Ken Cox [MVP] — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:42:00 GMT

I see by the Visual Studio Blog that Microsoft has backed out the worst of the darkness in the default Visual Studio 11 interface. Many of the ALL CAPS headings are gone and they’ve even added some colour to the previously monochrome icons.

This is certainly an improvement that we can live with. However, I still don’t understand why they’re being so stingy with the colour pixels. I call it the Visual Studio “Dungeon” theme.

The most intriguing part is that they’ve retained ALL CAPS for the main menu headings while conceding to mixed case for submenus.

I have no inside knowledge of this, but I speculate that someone high up at Microsoft has mandated an unappealing ‘Metro UI Standard’. Obtaining an exemption is tough. Thus, you can negotiate mixed case submenu items where it doesn’t show as much. Hmmm… Is it that ALL CAPS on main menus had to remain so as to be consistent with ALL CAPS on forthcoming Windows apps like OFFICE?

It sounds like somebody in a position of authority declared that icons must now be flat, dull and hard to recognize. If their consumers scream loud enough, a group (like VS) might be allowed to add some colour pixels back into the icons. Not too many, mind you. We need to retain some dungeon-like consistency.

All this is simply conjecture on my part. I really love the development features in Visual Studio. The productivity I get from Intellisense, syntax colouring, and the debugger far outweighs the minor annoyances of someone fiddling with the user interface colours.

Ken

A Small World in ASP.NET–NimblePros Acquired by Telerik

Ken Cox [MVP] — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:36:00 GMT

A few weeks ago, fellow ASPInsider Steve Smith of NimblePros passed a client to me. It’s a part-time “tweaks and maintenance” gig for a small startup. I was quite happy to take this on. I’m mostly retired and no longer work fulltime but still want to keep my hand in ASP.NET and Visual Studio - and earn money for toys.

The way I heard it at the time, NimblePros was giving up the smaller client because a bigger customer wanted the Nimble Pros to work fulltime on its projects. To ensure their availability, the big client was buying the whole company.

So, I picked up the development work on the site and have been happily moving it towards the public release. My new client spoke about the need for additional search and filtering functionality on some grids. I said that if they weren’t wedded to a pure Microsoft solution, I’d recommend the impressive Telerik RadGrid that I’ve used in other projects.

To that end, a couple of days ago, I noticed a new item in my TODO list mentioning “Telluric (sp???) as a possible tool”.

Today, I learn that NimblePros is now part of Telerik. More specifically, part of the Telerik Enterprise Services group.

Good luck to Steve and Michelle Smith and their NimblePros crew! It’s a small world, but yours just got bigger!

Ken

Full Disclosure: Telerik gave me a free subscription to its control suite when I was still an ASP.NET MVP.

CSS Float: Visual Studio 11 Beta Still No Help

Ken Cox [MVP] — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:02:00 GMT

Despite great strides in ASP.NET Design View, CSS float remains problematic for Visual Studio. A simple two column CSS float can be unintelligible at design time. You often have to scroll way to the right just to see where it went.

Sometimes I think I spend half my day trying to get div boxes to float properly this way or that. It shouldn’t be that hard.

We all know we’re supposed to use CSS instead of table cells. It would be nice if VS 11 beta had provided decent support for this often-used, standards-based Web page feature.

Not Happy With the Monochrome Visual Studio 11 Beta UI

Ken Cox [MVP] — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:31:00 GMT

I can’t wait for a third-party to come out with tools to return some colour to the flat, monochrome look of Visual Studio 11 (beta).

What bugs me most are the icons. I feel like a newbie when I have to squint and analyze the shape of icons on the debugging toolbar just to get the one I want. (Fortunately, the meddlers didn’t mess with the keyboard commands so I’m not totally lost.)

Not sure what usability studies told MS that bland is better. Maybe it is for most people, but not for me. Gray, shades of gray and black. Ugh. And don’t get me started on the stupidity of using all-caps for window titles. Who approved that?

I see that there’s a UserVoice poll on the topic (http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2623017-add-some-color-to-visual-studio-11-beta) but I doubt that anything will change Microsoft’s opinion in time for the release. Once a product gets to a stable beta, most non-crashing stuff gets pushed to the next version. I hope I’m proved wrong.

Fortunately, Visual Studio is quite customizable. Unless ‘Bland’ is hard-coded, some registry tweaks and a collection of replacement icons should allow dissenters like me back to productivity.

BTW, other than hating the UI, VS 11 beta is working quite well for me on a .NET 4 project.

Note: Although my username for the ASP.NET domain includes the letters "[MVP]", I'm no longer an MVP. Apparently it's nearly impossible to change a username in the system. My apologies for the misleading identifier but I tried to have it changed without success.

Fix: 'Unable to load one or more of the requested types' Errors

Ken Cox [MVP] — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:44:42 GMT

A long time ago, I reported on an intermittent ‘Could not load file or assembly‘ bug where ASP.NET 4 was encountering a bizarre error on start-up in System.Reflection.RuntimeModule.GetTypes(RuntimeModule module). I neglected to post a follow-up here.

The workaround is to always set the ContextTypeName property in your EntityDataSource. That is, you should set the ContextTypeName="ProjectNameNameSpace.EntityContainerName"

Here's an example of some mark-up:

   <asp:EntityDataSource ID="edsCategoryTypesFilter" runat="server" ConnectionString="name=OfficeBookDBEntities1"      
ContextTypeName="OfficeBook.OfficeBookDBEntities1" DefaultContainerName="OfficeBookDBEntities1"       
OrderBy="it.CategoryName" EntitySetName="AccountTypeCategories" EntityTypeFilter="AccountTypeCategories">       
</asp:EntityDataSource>

I hope this helps somebody.

Ken

EULAs are Fun. Mock Them Mercilessly!

Ken Cox [MVP] — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:43:33 GMT

In my previous post about the new, free Telerik JustDecompile beta, I made fun of the license terms that specifically forbade you from decompiling their decompiler. As you might expect, this was a copy and paste oversight and has been fixed in the latest downloadable installer. Thanks Telerik!

EULAs (speaking generally now) are a strange part of software distribution where the lawyers wield a club. For most consumers, the “I have read and agreed to the license conditions” checkbox is just a minor annoyance that they click through without a millisecond of concern. In fact, these agreements are fascinating and often laughable. You guys don’t know what you’re missing out there!

The lawyers for some corporations are candidly upfront that they take no responsibility if their expensive software trashes your machine. They even have the nerve to put in (fine) print that the product may be so buggy as to be unsuitable for any purpose at all. (A morale booster for the QA team, no doubt.) Warning: You’re risking your life, liberty, and happiness by installing this code. Don’t say you weren’t warned! Some clauses focus on promises not to use Logo-based code in a nuclear power station or near anyone on life support.

Do the CEOs and product managers read these things and push back? No. When challenged, powerful and highly-paid people cringe, cower, and dismiss the EULA as ‘a legal thing that we have no control over’.

Debates have raged for years about whether EULAs (click or shrinkwrap) are enforceable. Sure, you just agreed to hand over your first-born child by clicking “I Accept”. Now, what are the chances Company A’s corporate counsel would have the guts to seize your kid at school just because their stealth ‘phone home’ activation routine discovered that you installed their software on TWO VHDs?

For my part, I don’t need the cost, stress, and ignominy of having my sorry butt hauled into court by a heartless corporate legal department – even if I’m 100% in the right. You lose even when you win against these guys. It’s far more fun (and safer) to read through the EULAs and then blog about their silliness. Show no mercy! <grin>

Ken

Telerik’s Free Decompiler: Just Don’t Decompile It!*

Ken Cox [MVP] — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:43:00 GMT

Telerik has released a beta version of its new ‘always free’ .NET decompiler, JustDecompile. These guys really know their marketing and community support. (Redgate recently disappointed the community by moving the popular .NET Reflector to a $35 paid-for product.)

I’m not sure if its a beta glitch *, oversight, or a wacko lawyer requirement, but Telerik’s licence mentions twice that you must not decompile JustDecompile.

1.3.2 The Software and its constituent parts, such as any provided add-ons or other files, may not be reverse engineered, decompiled, disassembled or separated for use, nor placed for distribution, sale, or resale as individual creations by you.

2.6 You are not allowed to disassemble, decompile or “unlock”, decode or otherwise reverse translate or engineer, or attempt in any manner to reconstruct or discover any source code or underlying algorithms of Software that is provided to you in object code form only.

Meanwhile, JustDecompile doesn't generate VB.NET code yet - but according to the announcement, VB is coming 'in the near future'. Getting a quick VB version of a routine is one of my main uses for a decompiler and a .NET Reflector strong point.

Ken

Update April 28, 2011: Telerik has removed the offending terms from its installer. See EULAs are Fun. Mock Them Mercilessly! Ken.

Full Disclosure: Telerik gives me (and other Developer MVPs) a free copy of their suite.

We Need a Capped Plan for MSDN Azure Benefits

Ken Cox [MVP] — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:46:02 GMT

Like many developers, I’d like to play more with Windows Azure. Microsoft recently improved the MSDN Azure benefits – extending them to MSDN Professional subscribers.

The trouble is, the onus is on the subscriber to avoid hefty charges caused by exceeding the ‘free’ storage, compute hours, and bandwidth. Here’s the wording:

“For all usage that exceeds the free allocation above, customers will be charged at standard rates. To avoid charges customers should closely monitor their usage.”

For my part, I don’t intend to hand my credit card over to Microsoft for unpredictable, open-ended charges. Nor do I want to watch a meter day and night.

Instead, there should be a Capped Plan option to the MSDN Azure benefit with no credit card required. In this option, Microsoft simply pulls the Azure plug if my application somehow uses up its free allocation.

Developers need reassurance that learning, experimenting, or doing something stupid on Azure won’t run up a bill that gets their credit card over-extended and even revoked.

Ken

Fix: ASP.NET 4 Page on IIS 7 Misbehaves When Browser URL Doesn’t Include Default Page

Ken Cox [MVP] — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:37:28 GMT

After deploying an ASP.NET 4 application to the production server, data submitted in a form on the default page went nowhere. I discovered that the page worked normally if I included the name of the default document as in http://mydomain.com/default.aspx. When I navigated to the site as http://mydomain.com the postback misbehaved to the extent that there was no SQL connection – as if it didn’t even try.

All this worked fine on the development server which is IIS 6. The production server is IIS 7.

The fix was to go into my site’s master page and set the action attribute to default.aspx in the form tag:

   <form id="form1" action="default.aspx" runat="server">

There’s a detailed explanation in the section “Event Handlers Might Not Be Not Raised in a Default Document in IIS 7 or IIS 7.5 Integrated Mode” of the ASP.NET 4 Breaking Changes document.

Am I the only one who loses time on stuff like this?

Ken

Extracting the Date from a DateTime in Entity Framework 4 and LINQ

Ken Cox [MVP] — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:28:00 GMT

In my current ASP.NET 4 project, I’m displaying dates in a GridDateTimeColumn of Telerik’s ASP.NET Radgrid control. I don’t care about the time stuff, so my DataFormatString shows only the date bits:


<telerik:GridDateTimeColumn FilterControlWidth="100px" 
  DataField="DateCreated" HeaderText="Created"  
  SortExpression="DateCreated" ReadOnly="True"  
  UniqueName="DateCreated" PickerType="DatePicker"  
  DataFormatString="{0:dd MMM yy}">

My problem was that I couldn’t get the built-in column filtering (it uses Telerik’s DatePicker control) to behave. The DatePicker assumes that the time is 00:00:00 but the data would have times like 09:22:21. So, when you select a date and apply the EqualTo filter, you get no results. You would get results if all the time portions were 00:00:00.

In essence, I wanted my Entity Framework query to give the DatePicker what it wanted… a Date without the Time portion. Fortunately, EF4 provides the TruncateTime function. After you include


Imports System.Data.Objects.EntityFunctions

You’ll find that your EF queries will accept the TruncateTime function. Here’s my routine:


Protected Sub RadGrid1_NeedDataSource _ 
    (ByVal source As Object, _ 
     ByVal e As Telerik.Web.UI.GridNeedDataSourceEventArgs) _ 
    Handles RadGrid1.NeedDataSource 
    Dim ent As New OfficeBookDBEntities1 
    Dim TopBOMs = From t In ent.TopBom, i In ent.Items _ 
                  Where t.BusActivityID = busActivityID _ 
      And i.BusActivityID And t.ItemID = i.RecordID _ 
      Order By t.DateUpdated Descending _ 
      Select New With {.TopBomID = t.TopBomID, .ItemID = t.ItemID, _ 
                       .PartNumber = i.PartNumber, _ 
                       .Description = i.Description, .Notes = t.Notes, _ 
                       .DateCreated = TruncateTime(t.DateCreated), _ 
                       .DateUpdated = TruncateTime(t.DateUpdated)} 
    RadGrid1.DataSource = TopBOMs 
End Sub

Now when I select March 14, 2011 on the DatePicker, the filter doesn’t stumble on time values that don’t make sense.

Full Disclosure: Telerik gives me (and other developer MVPs) free copies of their suite.

Fix: CSS Problems in IE 8 With Over 31 StyleSheets

Ken Cox [MVP] — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:25:00 GMT

In my latest Web application, I went crazy trying to find out why a popup/overlay window style was acting up in IE 8 but was fine in the latest version of FireFox. After too many hours of frustration and dead ends, I took the issue to my friends at Telerik Support (the site I’m developing uses their excellent RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX suite).

Telerik diagnosed the problem immediately as too many stylesheets for Internet Explorer to handle. Huh?

I didn’t know about this limit (bug) of 31 stylesheets - but even if I had, I’d have wagered that I didn’t have that many. It turns out that many 3rd party controls generate styles as resources using an httphandler in the web.config file. Worse, even HTML style tags count as stylesheets to IE!

In my case, the solution was to add Telerik’s RadStyleSheetManager control to my master page. Suddenly, the troublesome style issue was gone.

From what I read on the InterWeb, Microsoft doesn’t plan to do anything about this limitation in IE 9, so it’s going to be around for a long while. You think Internet Explorer would at least give us a helpful error message such as “Sorry, there are too many stylesheets for me to handle. The page probably looks weird because I’m a wimp and have given up applying the excess styles.”

For more info on the issue, check out this blog post on Internet Explorer CSS limits:

http://blogs.telerik.com/kamenbundev/posts/10-05-03/internet_explorer_css_limits.aspx

Full Disclosure: As a Microsoft MVP for ASP.NET, Telerik gives me a free licence to its control suite.

Ken

Entity Framework Code-First to Provide Replacement for ASP.NET Profile Provider

Ken Cox [MVP] — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 17:15:18 GMT

A while back, I coordinated a project to add support for the SQL Table Profile Provider in ASP.NET 4 Web Applications. We urged Microsoft to improve ASP.NET’s built-in Profile support so our workaround wouldn’t be necessary. Instead, Microsoft plans to provide a replacement for ASP.NET Profile in a forthcoming release.

In response to my feature suggestion on Connect, Microsoft says we should look for something even better using Entity Framework:

“When code-first is officially released the final piece of a full replacement of the ASP.NET Profile will have arrived. Once code-first for EF4 is released, developers will have a really easy and very approachable way to create any arbitrary class, and automatically have the .NET Framework create a table to provide storage for that class. Furthermore developer will also have full LINQ-query capabilities against code-first classes. “

The downside is that there won’t be a way to retrofit this Profile replacement to pre- ASP.NET 4 Web applications. At least there’ll still be the MVP workaround code.

It looks like it’s time for me to dig into a CTP of EF Code-First to see what’s available. Scott Guthrie has been blogging about Code-First Development with Entity Framework 4.

It’s not clear when the EF Code-First is coming, but my guess is that it’ll be part of the VS 2010/.NET 4 service pack.

Help A Hacker: Give ‘Em The Windows Source Code

Ken Cox [MVP] — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 22:32:00 GMT

The announcement of another Windows megapatch reminded me of a WikiLeaks story about Microsoft Windows that hasn’t attracted much attention.

Alarmingly, we learn that the hackers have the Windows source code to study and test for vulnerabilities. Chinese hackers used the knowledge to breach Google’s accounts and servers:

“In 2003, the CNITSEC signed a Government Security Program (GSP) international agreement with Microsoft that allowed select companies such as TOPSEC access to Microsoft source code in order to secure the Windows platform”

“CNITSEC enterprises has recruited Chinese hackers in support of nationally-funded "network attack scientific research projects." From June 2002 to March 2003, TOPSEC employed a known Chinese hacker, Lin Yong (a.k.a. Lion and owner of the Honker Union of China), as senior security service engineer…”

Windows is widely seen as unsecurable. It doesn’t help that Chinese government-funded hackers are probing the source code for vulnerabilities. It seems odd that people who didn’t write the code can find vulnerabilities faster than the owners of the code.

Perhaps the U.S. government should hire its own hackers to go over the same Windows source code and then tell Microsoft how to secure its product?

Fix: The version of SQL Server in use does not support datatype 'datetime2'.

Ken Cox [MVP] — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 02:21:45 GMT

This message appeared today after posting a new build to our ASP.NET 4 web app: The version of SQL Server in use does not support datatype 'datetime2'. The DBA doesn’t use datetime2 because it’s new in SQL Server 2008 and the site runs on 2005. ...(read more)