Chinh Do

Version 1.2 of Transactional File Manager is now available on CodePlex.

Here’s the release notes:

Release Notes

This is a minor bug-fix/minor refactor release.
Fixes:

• Copy now uses the overwrite parameter correctly.
• Fixes crashing problem on some machines due to use of GetsequentialGuid.
• CreateDirectory now supports rolling back nested directories.
• RollbackFile Rollback() may throw exception when original directory has been deleted.
• Security issue when writing to event logs.

Enhancements:

• Upgrade solution/project files to Visual Studio 2010
• Use NUnit instead of VSTS framework
• Changes to support Visual Studio Express

Thanks to karbuke and dorong for their contributions.

The little known WBR tag is great for formatting HTML tables. Add it to specific places in your table cell values to give the browser the option to add a line break there. This is very useful when displaying tables with long strings that would otherwise cause horizontal scrolling.

Here’s a sample table, displaying some info. Since the values in the tables do not have spaces or tabs, the browser is forced to display the values on one line:

Here’s the same table, with <wbr/> tags inserted where periods are:

From my code snippets, here’s a function that will return the starting day of the week for any date:

/// <summary>
/// Gets the start of the week that contains the specified date.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="date">The date.</param>
/// <param name="weekStartsOn">The day that each week starts on.</param>
/// <returns>The start date of the week.</returns>
public static DateTime GetStartOfWeek(DateTime date, DayOfWeek weekStartsOn)
{
    int days = date.DayOfWeek - weekStartsOn;
    DateTime startOfWeek = days>=0 ? date.AddDays(-days) : date.AddDays(-7 - days);
    return startOfWeek;
}

It’s my first open source project! I’ve gone open source with my Transactional File Manager. Check out the CodePlex link here.

Use any file system as a transactional file system! Transactional File Manager is a .NET API that supports including file system operations such as file copy, move, delete in a transaction. It’s an implementation of System.Transaction.IEnlistmentNotification (works with System.Transactions.TransactionScope).

More on Transactional File Manager in my original blog post on it. If you are interested in contributing to the project, let me know.

If you get one of these errors starting MSMQ Server or installing MSMQ on Windows (Server 2008), this article describes a potential solution:

• You cannot start MSMQ Service with the following entry in the Application Event Log: The Message Queuing service cannot start. The internal private queue ‘admin_queue$’ cannot be initialized. If the problem persists, reinstall Message Queuing. Error 0xc00e0001.
• You cannot install MSMQ with the following error: Attempt to install Message Queuing Server failed with error code 0×80070643. Fatal error during installation. The following features were not installed: Message Queuing Services/Message Queuing Server.

  

For me, the solution was to delete the Registry key KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSMQ, then try the installation again.

See also:

• MSMQ won’t install on Windows 2008 with a Fatal Error (0×80070643)

Your house is haunted. You can’t stand living with the ghosts anymore and decide to call in the professional, a ghost hunter. The ghost hunter comes, nicely equipped with all kinds of shiny ghost hunting equipment, and proceeds to immediately pass out and fall to to the floor with a loud thud at first sight of the ghosts.

Well, in a nutshell, that is the story of the new Event Viewer in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. The new Event Viewer looks very nice and all. Trouble is, it now won’t work when there is a syntax error in machine.config or other .NET Framework problems. Apparently, in Windows Vista and Windows 2008, someone at Microsoft decided to rewrite the Event Viewer utility (a perfectly usable and solid utility in previous versions of Windows) in .NET.

So, the lesson I learned from this is: don’t hire ghost hunters who are afraid of ghosts. Or, don’t write a utility designed to view monitoring and troubleshooting messages that can fail due to unnecessary dependencies. A critical system troubleshooting utility such as Event Viewer should be the last thing that fails.

What to do when you cannot run Event Viewer in Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008/or Windows 7?

If you get the following error:

MMC could not create the snap-in. The snap-in might now have been installed correctly. Name: Event Viewer. CLSID: FX:{b05566ad-fe9c-4363-be05-7a4cbb7cb510}

Try the following:

• Fix any syntax errors in machine.config. Restore to a previously known working copy.
• Rename EventVwr.exe.config in %WINDIR%\System32.

If you are getting this error in your SQL Server T-SQL script:, you may be running into an issue with implicit string conversion in SQL Server:

declare @xml varchar(max), @doc XML, @stringVariable varchar(256)
set @stringVariable = 'a string value'

-- @doc is set by concatenating multiple string literals
-- and string variables, with all the variables having less than
-- or equal to 8000 characters
set @xml = '<root>' +
... + @stringVariable +
...
'</root>'

print len(@xml)

set @doc = @xml

Output

8000
Msg 9400, Level 16, State 1, Line 4
XML parsing: line 64, character 74, unexpected end of input

As you can see in the output, the @xml variable was truncated to 8000 characters, resulting in an invalid XML. This is due to the way SQL Server performs implicit string conversions when concatenating strings. When all the string literals/variables involved in the concatenation are 8000 characters or less, the resulting string will be exactly 8000 characters.

The same issue occurs with NVARCHAR data type. Instead of the 8000-character limit, it’s 4000 characters.

A simple fix is to make sure at least one of the string variables is of type VARCHAR(MAX):

declare @xml varchar(max), @doc XML, @stringVariable varchar(256)
declare @x varchar(max)

set @stringVariable = 'a string value'
set @x = ''

set @xml = @x + '<root>' +
... + @stringVariable +
...
'</root>'

print len(@xml)

set @doc = @xml

More Info

• String Concatenation Issues (Hrubaru’s blog)

To programmatically switch bindings on the fly, you can do it via the constructor of the generated client:

var client = new WeatherClient(“MyEndpoint”);

“MyEndpoint” is the name of the endpoint defined in your config file:

<client>
    <endpoint address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="http1" contract="MyContract" name="MyEndpoint" />

</client>

If you get the following exception calling a WebSphere web service from your .NET WCF Client (service reference):

System.ServiceModel.CommunicationException: The underlying connection was closed: The connection was closed unexpectedly. —>  System.Net.WebException: The underlying connection was closed: The connection was closed unexpectedly.

Try adding this code before the service call:

System.Net.ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = false;

More info on the 100-Continue behavior from MSDN.

Do you ever have the problem where you start a long running script (such as running a code build), multi-task on something else on another monitor while waiting for the script to finish, and then totally forget about the script until half an hour later? Well, here’s a solution your problem: have your script give you holler at you when it’s done.

In my library script file, I have the following functions to play sound files and to speak any text:

function PlayMp3($path) {
    # Use the default player to play. Hide the window.
    $si = new-object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
    $si.fileName = $path
    $si.windowStyle = [System.Diagnostics.ProcessWindowStyle]::Hidden
    $process = New-Object System.Diagnostics.Process
    $process.startInfo=$si
    $process.start()
}

function PlayWav($path) {
    $sound = new-Object System.Media.SoundPlayer;
    $sound.SoundLocation="$path";
    $sound.Play();
}

function Say($msg) {
    $Voice = new-object -com SAPI.SpVoice
    $Voice.Speak($msg, 1 )
}

If you like the text-to-speech feature but find Windows’ speech engine lacking, check out Ivona. It’s a commercial text-to-speech engine but you are allow to generate and download short speech files for free personal use. Now, my script can nicely interrupt me to tell me when it’s done. Other online text-to-speech engines: vozMe, SpokenText.

If Making Noise Is Not Your Thing

If making noise is not your thing, consider displaying a message in the Notification Area. Here’s the code (courtesy Microsoft TechNet):

function Get-ScriptName {
    $MyInvocation.ScriptName
} 

function DisplayNotificationInfo($msg, $title, $type) {
    # $type - "info" or "error"
    if ($type -eq $null) {$type = "info"}
    if ($title -eq $null) {$title = Get-ScriptName}

    [void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms")
    $objNotifyIcon = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon
    # Specify your own icon below
    $objNotifyIcon.Icon = "C:CdoScriptsFolder.ico"
    $objNotifyIcon.BalloonTipIcon = "Info"
    $objNotifyIcon.BalloonTipTitle = $title
    $objNotifyIcon.BalloonTipText = $msg

    $objNotifyIcon.Visible = $True
    $objNotifyIcon.ShowBalloonTip(10000)
}