Patrick Steele's .NET Blog

DotNetNuke Upgrade

I've gotten a number of questions regarding the upgrade of DotNetNuke I did for our local .NET User Group. It seems that before I fixed the problem (which, in reality, isn't really fixed yet) Google got it's virtual hands on the error message and it's now a top search result for DotNetNuke upgrade problems. So I'll repeat here what I've told a few other folks.

First off, DNN 2.0 now includes support for Access as a database. Since 1.x was SQL-only, I was surprised to find that the default provider in web.config is Access. I say "surprised" because I didn't notice this until I had upgraded the site and once the disk was done churning, I was greeted with a new, empty DNN site! Since I was expecting to see my old site upgraded, my heart skipped a few beats as I wondered if DNN had ate my previous portal. It hadn't -- once I switched providers the database was properly upgraded. So, when upgrading from SQL, make sure you change the default provider in web.config to be SQL.

That led to my permission problem (see the cached version here). I could not figure out what was going on so I renamed "Default.aspx" to "dnn.aspx" and created a "Default.aspx" which was basically a page saying "Sorry, the site is down. We'll get it back up soon."

I was then going to open a helpdesk ticket with my host and point them to "dnn.aspx" so they could see the error message about setting permissions. Well, when I actually clicked on the link to dnn.aspx, it worked! So I though, "Odd -- must have been a temporary glitch". I deleted the "Default.aspx" and renamed "dnn.aspx" back to "Default.aspx", thus putting everything back the way it was. I go back to the root page and refresh. Guess what? Boom! Permission error again. Argh....

So I tried something I didn't think would work. I created a "Default.asp" (yes, ASP) and put in a simple Response.Redirect to Default.aspx -- and that seems to work (but not all the time!). This is just a hack and I don't think it should be used. Someone else from our user group said that the webhost won't change permissions on the whole directory (like DNN wants), but we can get the same effect through impersonation. I haven't tried it yet but it's on my to-do list.

Offshoring: Not the easiest answer.

Dell admits it has "learned its lesson" after being forced to drop its Indian call center last year following customer complaints about the quality of service.

Handy KB Article on SQL Server Versions

Someone asked how to determine what version and service pack level of SQL Server you're running. I dug around on MSDN and found a handy KB article that shows you how!

HOW TO: Identify Your SQL Server Service Pack Version and Edition
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;321185

Are RCW's not CLS-compliant?

I'm working on .NET assembly that interops with some old VB6 code. I've generated the wrapper with TLBIMP.EXE and everything is working fine.

After running the assembly through FxCop, it warned me about not having the CLSComplaint attribute set (oops!). I added that to my AssemblyInfo file and now all of my methods that use any of the interfaces from the wrapper are marked as not CLS-compliant and I can't compile.

Ideas?

Silence of the bits...

Yikes. Four weeks of no updates. I hate going that long but luckily, work has kept me busy with some .NET stuff so I can't really complain. Been busy with a couple of things outside of work too:

Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group (GANG)

I've taken over the "webmaster" responsibilities for our local .NET user group, GANG. We got a lot of traffic at our booth during DevDays 2004 Detroit and attendance is picking up. Last week we had Paul Kimmel discussing the CodeDOM and how to generate source code on the fly. Very interesting stuff. Next month is Godfrey Nolan and "Creating a .NET Obfuscator".

Volunteer-IT.org

Along with GANG, some other regional .NET user groups have formed Volunteer-IT.org, a non-profit organization that will utilize the volunteer efforts of it's members to provide software development services to other non-profits -- in .NET, of course! It's a win-win since the non-profit's get help at a great price (free!) while local developers who may not have the ability to use .NET at work can get some real development time with .NET.

One last thing: If you ever run into a situation during coding or design where you say, "I should blog this", try and do it right away. I had a couple things over the past few weeks I meant to blog about, but put it off and never got it posted. And now I can't remember what it was...