Vince Blasberg's Blog

Another Contract Ends - Hanging Out the Shingle

2009-10-14T06:13:00Z

My current contract at Intuit is ending in a few weeks. I'm heading into a possible slow period so it's a good time to catch the blog up a little. If nothing else but to remind myself what I've been doing through this year since leaving Notion Solutions.

I've been subcontracting through CraftLogic at Inutit's IMS division since last February. In that time, I've delivered a few minor API service offerings for internal and external distribution, a few really great features, and a whole lot of maintenance to their existing high volume credit card transaction systems and web sites. With a new framework to streamline development and support, I'm not needed as much and neither are most other contractors that would hope to join such a great team. So I'm off to new ventures and adventures.

Other than their "Team Building" activities that make the team a real blast to work with, here are a few high level take-a-ways that I've had the pleasure of.

A refresher of Socket Development that I used to be devoted to (no C++ this time)
Leveraging MSMQ for Speed and Reliability
The ability to really, really, really tweak those stored procedures. And I thought I was good before I had TSQL script reviews...
What is Red Faction and is it ok to lose to someone named Rambo every time???

Any other details would start explaining the optimized and very secure processes at Innovative Merchant Solutions. Let's just say that they are deeply committed to their work and it's been a pleasure and education working with every one of them at IGS.

By the way, CraftLogic has also been a great company to work with while contracting at Intuit. They handle everything without distracting contractors like myself from the real work. I went corp-to-corp and really appreciate their partnership. Also as an independent contractor, I've worked on a few other commercial applications through a consulting company named Chordial Solutions. That kept my skills fresh with ASP.NET AJAX, Entity Framework, and SSIS.

In the last year I've also made great progress in the integration system software that I've imagined for about 10 years. In my own opinion, it's very unique, innovative, and valuable as a supplemental BPM and ETL system. It's been a great enabler to gain serious experience with WPF, Silverlight, RIA Services and so much more.

In these past few months, I've brought considerable value to everyone's offering, including my own FreshMetrics, LLC.

So if you find a need for a serious contract developer, please contact me through the FreshMetrics web site. I look forward to my next adventure with another great team.

-Vince
http://FreshMetrics.com

Life as an Independent Consultant

2009-03-12T05:07:00Z

It’s been almost a month since I left Notion Solutions to embark on a new adventure of driving an independent consulting company. Chris Menegay was the greatest to work with at Notion, so I truly appreciate what I learned and gave back to them. With the new gig it’s not all easy. There are some ups and downs that have been a challenge. The hardest parts have been expensive insurance policies, a formal payroll, and becoming a registered Microsoft partner for an upcoming product. With all of that behind us, it’s just work, work, work.

I’ve been holding two contracts now to make the startup ends meet. With one client, I’m performing back-end socket, threading, and SQL work. With the other client, I’m performing high level ASP.NET and SQL SSIS work. To top that, I’m also advising and assisting one client with TFS configuration, one of my biggest passions. I’m using Subversion with the other client. So I’m keeping the skills going across the board. This is what it’s all about (and making a profit). Now I’m wondering how to add more hours in the day to get the work done without hiring an employee. In consulting, as many consultants would know from experience, you must give the client their dollar’s worth or it’s back to the W2 and the nine-to-five. It almost sounds good, but I do like being around people more than being a cubicle mushroom that a W2 tends to make you. So that's where I'm at in this long history of blog entries. Enough about me.

-Vince

Azure Details and Limitations - Blobs, Tables, and Queues

2009-02-18T04:12:00Z

The Dallas Azure User Group will be meeting tomorrow at the Microsoft offices in Irving for our second meeting. I'm teamed up with Mike Holdorf and Rob Vettor to discuss Azure storage, namely Blobs, Tables, and Queues. The listing below is the document that I put together to hand out at the meeting with the "Details and Limitations". This should help us in our application designs as we move some of our systems to the cloud. These details are from the current SDK help file.

Windows Azure Details and Limitations
Blobs, Tables, and Queues

( From the Windows Azure SDK Help File )

Blobs

Block Id - 64 Bytes Per Block

PutBlob - 64 MB Total

Blob MetaData - 8 KB Per Blob

PutBlock / PutBlockList - 50 GB Each

Blocks - 4 MB Each

Container Name:

Valid DNS Name

All Lowercase

3 to 63 Characters

Starts With Letter or Number

Letters, Numbers, and Dash (-)

Every Dash (-) Must Be Immediately Preceded and Followed by a Letter or Number

Blob Name:

1,024 Characters Max

Any combination of characters, but reserved URL characters must be properly escaped

Specify a delimiter within a blob name to create a virtual hierarchy though blob storage is flat and not a hierarchical

Tables

Table Name:

Only Alphanumeric Characters

Case-Insensitive

3 to 63 Characters

May Not Begin With a Numeric Character

Up to 255 Entity Properties (including PartitionKey, RowKey, and Timestamp)

1 MB Max for Combined Size of All Data in an Entity's Properties

Property Name:

Case-Sensitive

255 Characters Max

Only Alphanumeric Characters

Must Begin With a Letter

Queues

Messages - 8 KB Max

Messages pushed to end of queue and popped from front of queue (FIFO)

Unlimited number of messages

Queue Name:

Valid DNS name

All Lowercase

3 to 63 Characters

Start With a Letter or Number

Letters, Numbers, and Dash (-)

First and Last Letters Must be Alphanumeric

Dash (-) character may not be the first or last letter

Azure Services Labs – Blobs, Queues, and Tables

2009-02-08T23:24:00Z

Woohoo!!! The Azure Services Training Kit was updated this week. Well, maybe it's not that exciting because it means more work or "fun" training. It all depends on whether the sun is shining and I can ride the Goldwing. It's overcast and very windy so I'm "enjoying" the Azure Services Training Kit Labs. I walked through some of the labs this weekend, primarily the Blobs, Table, and Queue labs to better prepare for our Dallas Azure User Group talk on the 18^th of this month. Mike Holdorf, Rob Vettor, and I are teaming up to present the topic of Azure Storage. It should be noted that the labs use the very useful SDK wrapper to abstract all of the REST complexities. So if you want to learn everything about Azure REST calls and how to handle retries and storage details, peek into the SDK example classes. In most cases, people just want to get the job done so these high level labs are very useful.

Now you want the fast track to learning Azure using these labs?

Watch some videos to get acclimated with what the Windows Azure Platform is. These videos are listed in my previous blog post on Windows Azure Resources.
Install the Azure Services Training Kit
Open the file: C:\AzureServicesKit\Labs.htm to list the "Hands-On Labs".
Perform each lab, starting with the first, to get the basic skills such as debugging in the development environment (Dev Fabric). The simplest way to walk through the labs is to just open the Word DOC and follow the instructions.

Leveraging the Azure SDK

The Azure SDK includes a DLL Wrapper located at "\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.0\samples\StorageClient". This is well written class library to make Azure Storage development easy. This is an extremely useful component that saves everyone time by avoiding the time to write individual REST interfaces to the Azure API. It's the code that we all would have written with at least a week of free time on our hands. It's also the code we should review to imitate the calls on other platforms such as Mono or non-dotnet environments for our REST calls. For blob calls, we would then look at the RestHelpers.cs, RestBlobStorage.cs, and the higher level calls in BlobStorage.cs.

Lessons Learned While Using the Azure Storage Labs

Read the Windows Azure SDK CHM file. This is a great resource for limitations and error messages.
To clear the database when all is done, from the Windows Azure SDK prompt, run "dsinit /forcecreate /server:<SQLServerInstance>"
From the SDK Documentation: Development storage supports only a single fixed account and a well-known authentication key. This account and key are the only credentials permitted for use with development storage. They are:

Account name: devstoreaccount1
Account key: Eby8vdM02xNOcqFlqUwJPLlmEtlCDXJ1OUzFT50uSRZ6IFsuFq2UVErCz4I6tq/K1SZFPTOtr/KBHBeksoGMGw==

I manually changed the SQL Server instance from "localhost\SQLExpress" so I could use my local SQL Server 2008 instance in the development fabric. But when the option is selected during the lab to "Create Test Storage Tables", it uses MSBuild tasks to create the tables. The setting in the Targets file is set for SQL Express.

For future references, after installing an Azure SDK update that overwrites these files, there are three places in two files to specify a different database location for the development fabric.

C:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.0\bin\DevelopmentStorage.exe.config
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\Cloud Service\v1.0\ Microsoft.CloudService.targets

-Vince

Notion Tools for Team System

2009-02-06T06:25:00Z

The company that I work for, Notion Solutions, has just announced a suite of extensions to Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. Here is an excerpt from the website:

These tools add new capabilities that help teams manage work better, plan schedules, visualize work relationships, manage requirements and requirements documents, record time, and more. The individual products that make up Notion Tools for Team System include:

Notion Timesheet - Classic timesheet features fully integrated with Team System.
Notion Work Organizer - Manage work items and documents from a single, easy-to-use interface.
Notion Work Planner - Plan iterations and releases based on real teams, real schedules, and real conflicts.
Notion Work Item Control Library - Enable hierarchical Work Item relationships

There is an FAQ available for more information.

I've worked with the team at Notion for quite a while building up these tools. The tools will continue to gain features through the next few months. Be sure to download a trial version from the site and see if they boost your TFS productivity.

-Vince

If I Ran Microsoft

2009-02-06T05:43:00Z

I saw the "If I Ran Microsoft" video online today. It mentioned the public image for Microsoft and the great things that they do. The video showed the "We Are Microsoft Charity Challenge Weekend". It was a big deal for those charities that now have a great system to do their charity work with. I'm so glad that I had a part in it this year.

No. This isn't my version of the "If I Ran Microsoft". I'm not presumptuous enough to think I know how to keep such a huge company running properly with a real profit. There are marketing engines in place and research being done to ensure its success. Think about the magnitude of Microsoft (like Wal-Mart unfortunately).

Employees and Their Families
Microsoft Partners and Their Employees and Families
Independent Developers and Companies that Rest on Microsoft Systems and all employees and Families
The Auto Industry selling new cars while getting bail-out money (sorry - bridge loans) and the Unknown Loan Companies that bought the auto loans from them a long time ago for all of those people mentioned.

Microsoft has a huge impact on the country where open source software and the expensive support that comes with it cannot replace.

-Vince

Windows Azure Resources

2009-01-21T22:21:00Z

I compiled these Azure Platform Services related resources and distributed them to the Cloud Computing User Group in Dallas on 01/21/2009.

To navigate to the resource, add the id from the left column to the right of "http://tinyurl.com//".
For example, our user group web site is located at "http://tinyurl.com/9na8v7".

9na8v7	AzureUserGroup.com
8rdgqu	AzureJournal.com

MSDN
9xrymt	Azure Services Platform
65ogcw	Azure Services Platform Developer Center
6yy75b	Windows Azure SDK Documentation
5pw2md	Cloud Computing Tools
4m92h9	Known Issues and Constraints

MSDN Introduction Articles and Walkthroughs
6rjx9w	Quick Lap around the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio
83x2a9	Deploying a Service on Windows Azure
7kwzud	Using the Cloud Service Project Roles Node
79gjpc	Windows Azure Tools Development Fabric and Storage Integration
7j7zen	Enabling SSL Connections on Windows Azure
7upn2y	Other Technical Walkthroughs

Channel 9 Videos
6fkzqo	Channel 9: Introducing Windows Azure - Manuvir Das
5cvwef	Channel 9: Windows Azure for Developers - Steve Marx
6q8qh3	Channel 9: SQL Server Data Services - Dave Campbell
6eatl6	Channel 9: SQL Server Data Services Team Talks Business Value
5d5tdl	Channel 9: SQL Server Data Services Team Talks Architecture
9dyl93	Channel 9: John Shewchuk and Dennis Pilarinos: Inside .NET Services
62ueqf	Channel 9: Ray Ozzie: Reflections on Azure
6ootax	PDC: A Lap around Windows Azure - Manuvir Das
8neplt	PDC: Essential Cloud Storage Services - Brad Calder
66ehf3	PDC: Developing and Deploying Your First Windows Azure Service
5m3tnb	PDC: Windows Azure: Cloud Service Development Best Practices
a3s5qg	MSDN: An Introduction to SQL Data Services
9t2vhx	TechNet: Introduction to SQL Data Services
86gcew	ITTV: Visual Studio 2010 and Azure Cloud Computing
8lmsva	ITTV: Dave Campbell on Azure and SQL Server Services
7kzs2l	.Net Rocks: David Aiken on Azure
97ugj7	Deep Fried Bytes: Windows Azure - The Overlord in the Cloud

Blogs
92bww2	David Pallmann
7dfemh	AzureFeeds
95ckax	Cloud Computing Tools Team Blog
8uzbab	Cloudy in Seattle
7hw9sr	Oakleaf Systems

Other
8he7zo	LifeTracks - Live Sample Application (Live)
6272bn	Azure Services Platform Whitepapers

Cloud Computing User Group – Dallas Meeting #1

2009-01-20T17:50:00Z

It feels great to get back in action like when I was always running the Dallas C# SIG. Now I'm helping Mike Holdorf and Rob Vettor run the CCUG in Dallas. The first meeting is finally here (tomorrow). This invite says it all.

Don't miss the opportunity to be at the first local meeting of the Cloud Computing User Group.

Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud computing platform. At this meeting, you'll hear about Microsoft's vision of Software + Services and what it can mean for you. As part of this presentation, you'll see a demo of how a cloud application is developed and deployed.

January 21, 2009 from 6:00 - 8:00 pm

Microsoft Corporation
7000 North Highway 161
Las Colinas Campus
Irving, TX 75039
USA
Map: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/info/usaoffices/southcentral/dallas.asp

Please take a moment to register here so we can plan properly. Pizza will be served at 6:00 and the presentation / demo will begin shortly after.

-Vince

We Are Microsoft 2009 - Done and Done Great

2009-01-20T05:47:00Z

The "We Are Microsoft Charity Challenge 2009" event was a great success this year. So many dedicated, community-spirited people contributed their time. The biggest thank you goes out to Toi Wright from the Dallas ASP.Net User Group. She literally put her life into it. She put her husband in the volunteer group also. Now that's thinking. Chris Koenig dedicated some serious time to the event and a portion of Microsoft's funds. Much of that time just might have been spent using twitter with Peter DeBetta, solving the Rubik's cube in minutes, and playing with the Duncan YoYos. It's a tough job...

The TFS portion of the event went great thanks to the footwork of John Burns from Notion Solutions and Paul Hacker from SaaS Made Easy with Chris Koenig doing some team project admin work. The business analyst team spent plenty of time reviewing and entering the requirements in TFS before developers arrived.

Then the weekend started!!

After all of the charities were introduced and the teams gathered, I gave a 45 minute demonstration to some of the group members on everything that was needed to use TFS work items and source control. Others that gave training were Gabe with Telerik for Sitefinity, Matt with Verio for hosting, and Scott Dockendorf from Telligent for Graffiti. All of the teams were ready to create and deploy truly RAD applications at this point. Teams from several consulting companies showed up such as Sogeti, Telligent, Match, and 3 teams from Pariveda.

There were about 20 charities that were given a two day turn-around from design to delivery. Some of the sites were great because they leveraged content management systems such as Graffiti, Sitefinity, DotNetNuke, and Mojo Portal. There were a few that hand rolled the ASP.NET site because it best fit the requirements.

The Highlights:

The Mountain Dew went dry on the first night. It birthed a new development framework, the MDF - Mountain Dew Framework - the amount of Mt. Dew to get from Design to DAL to Delivery or similar.
The chocolate covered coffee beans needed pennies to get them out of the dispenser so we took the top off and ate them anyway. (What's in your wallet? Not pennies - I'm sure)
The bowl of Hershey's kisses took all weekend to drain. We were all eating healthy...Right.
The Dickey's Barbeque didn't last even with a second delivery.
Some great "We Are Microsoft" blankets were distributed to the true Night Owls, but they were really a batman costume for some.
Some found out that they couldn't deploy at the 11^th hour - but hip-hip-hurray for PowerPoint.
A chicken (foam mascot) came before the egg - so that debate is FINALLY over and solved. (See the "proof" on Facebook)
The value of a User Experience / Design professional was felt by all teams. Some brought their own from places like Arkansas. There will be more UX pros at next year's event.
Awards were given to memorable people and their "special" talents. I was awarded the "Best TFS Ninja". Thanks everyone - I did my share of work - TFS style.
Charities were overjoyed to get feature-rich web applications that they can maintain themselves for years to come.
Fun was had my all !!!

To get the real-deal-feel for what the atmosphere was like, there are at least 187 photos and 18 videos located at: http://www.facebook.com/groups/edit.php?members&gid=25590171916#/event.php?eid=44676024865

-Vince

We are Microsoft - This Weekend

2009-01-14T05:30:00Z

"We are Microsoft" is this weekend!!! This event is all about giving a helping hand using our special talents to build solutions for non-profit organizations. If there's more team work than that, please let me know.

For the second year, Toi Wright, along with many others have put on this event in Dallas, Texas. What she needs now are some stand-by developers in case some organizations have projects that don't have enough developers, DBA's, testers, etc.

Notion Solutions and the very TFS-talented Paul Hacker from SaaS Made Easy, has setup and hosted a TFS server and is eager and ready to keep the development going. Here is the mention for Notion Solutions.

Notion Solutions to Provide TFS (With Paul Hacker Hosting it...)
http://blog.wearemicrosoft.com/2008/10/10/notion-solutions-to-provide-tfs.aspx

I'll be there with another Notion Solution-ite, John Burns, through much of the weekend to provide TFS Training, TFS support, and some development assistance. When not doing that, I'll probably help others build unit tests, web tests, and good grief - maybe some code.

So how about it? Want to sacrifice a weekend for some great causes? Sign up, show up, code up, and go home on Sunday.

-Vince

Managed Extensibility Framework - Very Impressive

2009-01-13T01:06:00Z

For those who haven’t heard of the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF), a CodePlex project, there is a good episode of .NetRocks with Glen Block to explain it.

When I first heard about this provider framework, I said like many others no doubt, “Hey – I wrote an extensibility framework like that back when... I wish I had it then.” The framework that I wrote was a very flexible SOA prototype when the buzz word was SOA and nothing else. The components could be written, configured in a SQL Server catalog, enabled, data gets served, services gets oriented. In ten minutes or less, about the time to wait for a Starbucks coffee, you could code a new component and have it configured and running in the system. It’s downside was that it wasn’t schema driven so you got your work done, but some critics would say that it didn't following a schema driven, version nightmare system that takes the rest of your man-month to do right. Now we have a nice alternative - the MEF.

The MEF system uses the term, “Part” for an entity that exports or imports services. I’m very impressed with the MEF because it handles so many aspects of an extensible application that costs every innovative organization too much time and money.

Some out of the box features for the MEF include the following items.

· Optional Directory Watcher for New Assemblies

· Locking the Collection of “Parts”

· Caching Parts for Repeated Usage

· Export Parts for and Import Parts for Consummation

· Automatic Import Variable Setting

· Hierarchical Composition of Parts

MEF includes a few samples:

MEFlook - Outlook like client

MEFTris - Tetris like game with shapes as plug-ins

Extensible File Explorer - File explorer with extensible views, favorites file viewers and shell services

What application should use MEF? Paint.Net? Reflector?

Check it out if you have a need for a flexible provider system.

-Vince

Debugging with VS2008 at the Dallas ASP.NET UG

2008-12-10T06:56:00Z

Some time back, I gave a talk at the Dallas ASP.NET User Group on the topic of "Debugging with Visual Studio 2008". In case anyone can find the notes, slides, and demos useful, they are located at http://www.dallasasp.net/Meetings/238.aspx. Some things have changed since Silverlight has gone RTW (Released To Web/World).

At the meeting, we discussed ways to think like an efficient debugging developer and then we walked through the demos to see it in action. We walked performed some debugging actions and looked at a few things that a typical debugging session doesn't encounter. We looked at the rarely used attributes that are good for debugging, IE Developer toolbar, and Firefox's FireBug.

I will repeat some advice that I was given over 13 years ago. Anyone can work and produce but more valuable are people who solve problems. Now that's good debugging advice. This was one of my favorite talks and I hope the demos will be helpful to others. The demo concept entails a meeting RSVP system. The data is random based on the time but the numbers change just the same.

Demos:

RSVPSilverlightWeb: A simple ASP.NET web site with three example technologies: Standard ASP.NET AJAX, JSON, and a Silverlight control. We performed some debugging with the three components that are located on a single web page.

RSVPModule: An HTTP Module used in the website to display the page load time.

RSVPHandler: An HTTP Handler that will perform work for urls with the "RSVP" extension such as ShowDallasASPNetUG.rsvp. I noticed that the demo zip file does not have the extremely simple RSVP application that was deployed to my IIS. You can reproduce this extremely simple demo. It is an ASP.NET application with a simple default.aspx and nothing added. The web.config has one line added to to the httpHandlers node as shown below. This register the handler to call the handler for debugging.

<add verb="*" path="*.rsvp" type="RSVP.RSVPHandler" />
</httpHandlers>

RSVPSilverlight: This is a Silverlight component that uses a web service file, WebServiceSilverlight.cs, in the RSVPSilverlightWeb website project. Beware - this was the beta2 version without considerations for cross-domain web service calls. To get it working properly with the RTW version, we follow the link at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc197955(VS.95).aspx and re-create the service reference in the Silverlight control.

RSVPGadget: A Windows Vista Gadget using our existing WCF with JSON that is consumed on the RSVPSilverlightWeb page. The files that are in the RSVPGadget files are copied to a folder such as

"C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\RSVP.gadget".

Resources:

The Ultimate Debugger (Tess Ferrandez)

http://blogs.msdn.com/tess

Books

Debugging Strategies for .Net Developers
Apress - Darin Dillon
Debugging .NET 2.0 Applications
MSPress - John Robbins

Stay Current on ASP.NET and Silverlight 2.0

http://www.asp.net/downloads/vs2008/

Javascript Debugging

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/07/19/vs-2008-javascript-debugging.aspx

Debugging ASP.NET AJAX Applications

http://www.asp.net/learn/ajax/tutorial-06-cs.aspx

Firebug: (Tutorial)

http://michaelsync.net/2007/09/08/firebug-tutorial-overview-of-firebug

Production Debugging

http://blogs.msdn.com/tom/archive/2008/07/15/debugging-asp-net-on-a-production-server-101.aspx

WinDbg + SOS

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/892277

More on Vista Gadgets:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/vista/gadgets-pt1.mspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163370.aspx

The Vista Gadget:

The Demo Web Page:

Jing - A Really Great Free Capture Tool

2008-08-28T17:27:00Z

I stumbled across The Jinq Project last week and I think that it's just great. I've had my eye on TechSmith's Camtasia product for a while and will eventually purchase it when I absolutely need it. But for a 5 minute video or screen capture, Jing does the job easily. It may even replace Vista's simple screen capture utility that I use constantly in my work. Jing installs easily and produces SWF files for video and captures the screen for images. The resulting file can be uploaded to ScreenCast for free, for a while, or copied to the hard drive.

The free product (project) is over a year old, but better late than never to find a good tool. They have so many screen capture tutorials to show how to use the already simple-to-use tool. I let others know around the office and now they are enthusiastically using it.

-Vince

Visual Studio 2008 SP1

2008-08-13T15:03:00Z

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 has finally arrived. It is a warm welcome with the way that my Visual Studio installation "found opportunities to suddenly restart", let's say. The SP1 installation is rather interesting, like the VS2005 service packs were. It takes a very long time to complete, it pops up (and hides) alert windows behind the installation window, it requires the VS2008 DVD, and it requires a reboot if some applications are running such as my Yahoo messenger... Hmmm... So I would suggest that when installing this service pack, stay focused on its progress and start it when you don't need to get work done.

-Vince

DBPro How To: Initially Populating an ASP.NET Membership Database

2008-08-01T15:52:00Z

With just the schema alone, the ASP.NET membership (role, profile, etc.) database does not have enough information to operate correctly. There are a few records needed or else the ASP.NET membership and other providers will throw an error complaining that it may be an invalid version. This is good, of course, so that the ASP.NET membership providers can innovate and the membership database will remain intact for existing application versions. These additional records can be inserted with DBPro by adding a SQL script in the “Post-Deployment” folder under the DBPro project scripts folder. We could name the file, “AspNet_SchemaRecords.sql”. Also at this location, the file named Script.PostDeployment.sql must have an entry to run the post deployment SQL script. After making these changes then deploying a new database with DBPro, an ASP.NET application should be able to connect and start using the database immediately. Maybe in the future, this can be an option in the project wizard or available as an add-on script on the Microsoft site.

An Entry in Script.PostDeployment.sql:

-- Initialize ASPNET membership schema records after a complete database rebuild.
:r .\AspNet_SchemaRecords.sql

AspNet_SchemaRecords.sql:

USE DatabaseName;

IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM aspnet_SchemaVersions WHERE Feature = N'common')
      INSERT INTO aspnet_SchemaVersions (Feature, CompatibleSchemaVersion, IsCurrentVersion) VALUES('common', '1', 1)

IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM aspnet_SchemaVersions WHERE Feature = N'health monitoring')
      INSERT INTO aspnet_SchemaVersions (Feature, CompatibleSchemaVersion, IsCurrentVersion) VALUES('health monitoring', '1', 1)

IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM aspnet_SchemaVersions WHERE Feature = N'membership')
      INSERT INTO aspnet_SchemaVersions (Feature, CompatibleSchemaVersion, IsCurrentVersion) VALUES('membership', '1', 1)

IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM aspnet_SchemaVersions WHERE Feature = N'personalization')
      INSERT INTO aspnet_SchemaVersions (Feature, CompatibleSchemaVersion, IsCurrentVersion) VALUES('personalization', '1', 1)

IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM aspnet_SchemaVersions WHERE Feature = N'profile')
      INSERT INTO aspnet_SchemaVersions (Feature, CompatibleSchemaVersion, IsCurrentVersion) VALUES('profile', '1', 1)

IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM aspnet_SchemaVersions WHERE Feature = N'role manager')
      INSERT INTO aspnet_SchemaVersions (Feature, CompatibleSchemaVersion, IsCurrentVersion) VALUES('role manager', '1', 1)

Block Id - 64 Bytes Per Block	PutBlob - 64 MB Total
Blob MetaData - 8 KB Per Blob	PutBlock / PutBlockList - 50 GB Each
Blocks - 4 MB Each

Valid DNS Name	All Lowercase
3 to 63 Characters	Starts With Letter or Number
Letters, Numbers, and Dash (-)
Every Dash (-) Must Be Immediately Preceded and Followed by a Letter or Number

Only Alphanumeric Characters	Case-Insensitive
3 to 63 Characters	May Not Begin With a Numeric Character
Up to 255 Entity Properties (including PartitionKey, RowKey, and Timestamp)
1 MB Max for Combined Size of All Data in an Entity's Properties

Case-Sensitive	255 Characters Max
Only Alphanumeric Characters	Must Begin With a Letter

Vince Blasberg's Blog

Another Contract Ends - Hanging Out the Shingle

Life as an Independent Consultant

Azure Details and Limitations - Blobs, Tables, and Queues

Windows Azure Details and LimitationsBlobs, Tables, and Queues

( From the Windows Azure SDK Help File )

Blobs

Tables

Queues

Azure Services Labs – Blobs, Queues, and Tables

Notion Tools for Team System

If I Ran Microsoft

Windows Azure Resources

Cloud Computing User Group – Dallas Meeting #1

We Are Microsoft 2009 - Done and Done Great

We are Microsoft - This Weekend

Managed Extensibility Framework - Very Impressive

Debugging with VS2008 at the Dallas ASP.NET UG

Jing - A Really Great Free Capture Tool

Visual Studio 2008 SP1

DBPro How To: Initially Populating an ASP.NET Membership Database

Windows Azure Details and Limitations
Blobs, Tables, and Queues