Why Do I Love Cheating On Dot Net As Much As I Do With.....Ruby(LOL)!

I try to keep this site clear of anything other than my love for .Net, but I am the biggest cheater I have ever known. You know why? I really, really love Ruby on Rails! There.... I said it! I mean I REALLY love Ruby on Rails! I'm telling you this for a few reasons. First, as you move through the programming world, it is important to keep your mind open. A programmer should know multiple languages. It helps you on a number of levels. Professionally, it helps if you can demonstrate your flexibility in learning new things. Second, if you ever need to find a new job, you have more than one programming language under your belt which can open up more programming opportunities for you. Third, knowing more than one language helps you to see deficiencies more clearly in the languages you use. I can tell you from experience that learning .Net and then learning Ruby made me clearly see some key deficiencies in .Net - even though I still love .Net.

I'm not saying that you need to learn every language under the sun, but knowing additional languages can only be a good thing. If you are a .Net programmer, I HIGHLY suggest that you add Ruby on Rails to your arsenal. As a plus, you can likely create a fully functioning program in Ruby in less time than it took you to read this.

Smooches,

Kila

Finding The .SQL Mime Type SQL Server Mime Type

OMG! Why are some things so much more difficult than they need to be? I am creating a database application to make my life simpler. The application allows you to enter class file information once and then the application automatically, or should I say automagically, creates the class .cs file, Fluent NHibernate mapping files in your choice of AutoMap or ClassMap files (AutoMap and overrides are my preference) and the database .sql script. Creating the files and saving them to the database is simple. The problem came when I needed to download the files from the database. The system was adding a .txt file to the end of the file - Example: FileName.sql.txt. This was making me very sad.

I decided to get the actual mime type for a sql file so that the file would download appropriately without adding .txt to the file. Well you would think that I was trying to find how to get into Fort Knox or something. The general consensus is that most people just want to use text/plain. Not I said the mouse! Well I decided to use something I had used before - the Gnome Mime Type database. This database had allowed me to find a mime type that worked properly with some other Microsoft files that I was saving and retrieving from a database (for example, the mime type for a .cs file in the Gnome library is text/c-sharp and it works perfectly). Sooooo back to my good old friend.

The mime type for a .sql file is text/x-sql. The Gnome mime library is pretty extensive. The goal is to be a resource and standard way of using and finding mime types.

This is a simple thing, but since Google wasn't the easiest resource for finding the mime type for .sql files, I thought you might find this useful.

PROBLEM:

What is the .sql mime type? Where can I find the .sql mime type? Should I use text/plain or another mime type for .sql files?

SOLUTION:

You can use text/x-sql and you can use the Gnome library to find out more mime types as needed.

Smooches,

Kila Morton

How To Solve System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper' does not contain a definition for 'RenderPartial' and no extension method 'RenderPartial'

Sometimes there are errors when you build in ASP.NET MVC that just make you want to shoot your own computer! You resist the urge of course (I hope), but the desire is still there! While I was creating an extension helper in ASP.NET MVC using Visual Studio 2010, I came across this error:

How To Solve System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper' does not contain a definition for 'RenderPartial' and no extension method 'RenderPartial' accepting a first argument of type 'System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

Ummm.....NO I am NOT missing a using directive or assembly reference - thank you very much! Well actually I was - LOL. I'm using MVC2. It seems that it wants an additional reference to reference RenderPartial now.

Here is a list of the usings I was using
(notice that wording - "usings I was using" - that makes me laugh - I crack myself up sometimes!) -

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.Routing;
using System.Web;
using System.Reflection;

The using statements above SHOULD be enough to allow me to use RenderPartial. Unfortunately, I had to add ONE MORE using statement to make it work -

using System.Web.Mvc.Html;

That solved the issue! Why does Microsoft change little things like this? Do they do it just to drive people crazy?

Smooches,

Kila


PROBLEM:
How To Solve System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper' does not contain a definition for 'RenderPartial' and no extension method 'RenderPartial' accepting a first argument of type 'System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

SOLUTION:
Make sure you are referencing MVC in your web.config, make sure you have a mvc using statements listed above in your file and make sure you add the following item to that list of using statements.

using System.Web.Mvc.Html;

Problems With The HP ZD8000!

There are very few products that I actually can say that I hate, however, HP has managed to make two products that are on my list.

A few years ago, I was given an HP zd8000 as a gift. I know the person that gave this thing to me cares for me very much so I don't hate them, but this laptop has to be one of the worst pieces of technology I have EVER owned. If this was my only laptop, I would be really, really angry right now. As it stands, it is one of many. However, since I just had to spend more time than I care to admit upgrading it to Windows7, I'm going to just list the problems I have had to date.

The computer is now 3 years old. However, I have been having many of these issues for a while now.

1.) The keyboard misses, skips and does not register some keystrokes. It happens to all of the keys. You will go along typing with a smile on your face only to realize that half the letters you typed were not registered by the keyboard. I used to have a USB keyboard attached to this laptop so I didn't notice this problem. It makes you want to scream!

2.) Several of the USB ports have DISCONNECTED from whatever they are connected to inside of the computer. I'm pretty handy with a screwdriver so I can correct this one, but it should not have happened in the first place.

3.) The computer overheats to the point that it could cause a fire! I have handled this issue with a Belkin cooling fan underneath the laptop. I hope this will help.

4.) The DVD RW drive stopped recognizing DVDs. This was OK after an upgrade to Windows 7. Well let me say that it MIGHT be OK. I say MIGHT because I JUST upgraded the machine from XP to Windows 7 TODAY! However, so far so good on that issue.

5.) The laptop battery no longer works. The system will not register that there is a battery. This is my FOURTH battery! There is a recall on this issue, so maybe it will work now.

6.) The power supply stopped working. It seems like it is the power supply connector that is the issue. I had to use some electrical tape to keep it connected and still.

7.) The middle of the touch pad has worn down to the point that I can see the green circuit board underneath it.

Of course, the warranty is gone so the best I can do is replace the parts myself. I wasn't angry about these things until I did a search and discovered that these are major issues for MANY ZD8000 owners! In fact, I saw MANY people talking about and suggesting class action lawsuits over the ZD8000 issues.

It makes me feel sick to my stomach that a company like HP would make computers like this without the thorough testing needed to make sure that they will work consistently and it really makes me sick to know that HP won't make things right!

How To Get Fluent NHibernate, NHibernate And Castle To Work Using Medium Trust

There are times when open source projects can give you incredible joy. Then there are other times when you just want to go find the developers of a particular open source project and yell at them just a little bit. The truth is that we should all be thankful that open source developers care enough to create fantastic open source projects, but sometimes things can get hairy and scary. I had one such situation with NHibernate, Fluent NHibernate, Castle and StructureMap when I tried to get everything working in a medium trust environment. I'm going to tell you how to solve the problem so that you can have an easier go of things than I had.

I created a beautiful project using NHibernate, Fluent NHibernate , the part of Castle that NHibernate relies on and StructureMap. Everything worked perfectly in development and I was super happy and all smiles. Instead of just releasing the project, I decided to create a coming soon page for it. The coming soon page can be seen here - http://www.thedesigncoders.com/comingsoon. That page has a contact form on it that uses NHibernate to persist the data. This page looked and worked great on my development machine, but I got a rude awakening after deploying it. That rude awakening was an error - System.Security.SecurityException: That assembly does not allow partially trusted callers. What? OMG! Here was the first lesson for me - always run your project on dev using the same trust level as your production environment. Doing this would have shown me the error well before deployment. OK. Lesson learned.

Now I was in a pickle. The error was occurring in Castle according to the error message. I used Google to investigate the issue. There were a whole lot of different things that people tried. One of them was to disable lazy loading. I nearly lost my lunch when I read that! I had set up Fluent NHibernate using its AutoMap feature and I had an EXTENSIVE database system with a lot of interconnected many to one, one to one and one to many relationships. Disabling lazy loading would basically mean that I might as well remove NHibernate and Fluent NHibernate and use Entity Framework. That, however, would have taken me a long time to do and it simply wasn't anything I even wanted to think about. I don't have anything against Entity Framework, but it took effort for me to set up NHibernate, Fluent NHibernate and StructureMap and I wasn't about to abandon my beautifully done project because of one stupid error. I was GOING to figure this out.

OK. So after viewing some blogs AND the NHibernate website, which suggested that I would need to go through hell and high water to get things to work, I decided to keep searching. Here are some of the articles I came across.

1. Use NHibernate Proxy Generators
   http://nhforge.org/blogs/nhibernate/archive/2008/09/23/introducing-nhibernate-proxygenerators.aspx
   This would be good, but I'm using Fluent NHibernate's AutoMap feature so I don't use mapping files. That means that this is useless to me and it is likely unnecessary for you.
   


2. Disable Lazy Loading, Disable Reflection Optimization & Change Web.Config Permissions
   http://nhforge.org/wikis/howtonh/run-in-medium-trust.aspx
   No, no and NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Fluent NHibernate's AutoMap feature makes things REALLY easy for me. If I had to disable lazy loading on my project given how large the database is and how much work Fluent NHibernate saves me from doing, I would have a fit. This just WAS NOT an option. In fact, it was a beyond useless idea to me.
   


3. Rebuilding The Castle Project, NHibernate and Fluent NHibernate
   http://blog.yeticode.co.uk/2010/03/running-nhibernate-in-medium-trust/
   Hmmmm....this sounds good...... or so I thought! I would SIMPLY download all three projects, change the assembly in Castle to AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers, build it and use the dlls to then rebuild everything else. Great! I download the latest version of Castle and I start down that road. God/Allah/Jehovah/Jesus/Messiah/ HELP ME!!! It is times like these that make you feel stupid. I did all of that without thinking about ONE important (very important) thing - I didn't initially pay attention to the various versions of the files! Doooh!! Things did not match up! This version needed that version and that version needed this version and so on and so on. The problem wasn't JUST the versioning. Castle rolled its Dynamic Proxy into Castle.Core. It used to be its own project, but they changed this in the latest version. This meant that I had to change various parts of NHibernate. NHibernate was looking for a reference to Castle.Core AND Castle.DynamicProxy. I was starting to think about looking for a drink - and that says a lot because I have never had a drink of alcohol in my life! Fortunately, I figured out a different way.
   

I started thinking about the problem. The problem was that I couldn't set this project up on my chosen host because they don't allow people's apps to use full trust and the components I was using required full trust to do certain things. Surely I wasn't the only person who had this issue. In fact, I was positive I wasn't the only person with this issue because Google told me so (lol). Therefore, someone else had to have come up with a solution. I found that someone or a group of someones (I know this isn't proper grammar) had already solved the problem for their project. That project is called Cuyahoga. That brings me to solution number 4 -

4. When In Doubt, Use The Files Of Someone Else To Work It Out! (I love that rhyme)

Yeah! Now that is my kind of solution. After pulling out my hair by the root, this “solution” left me with 5 strands left! Cuyahoga is using NHibernate with Castle. Since they have already conquered the medium trust issue, I knew that their latest files should be sufficient for me. They don't use Fluent NHibernate (shame on them), but I knew that it would be nothing for me to download the latest source of Fluent NHibernate, add the dlls I took from Cuyahoga to the src and then compile everything. That is what I did and it worked like a charm. I swapped out the dlls in my project and I didn't have to disable or change anything else. Yes! Yes! Yes!

Here is the link to the Cuyahoga files.

https://cuyahoga.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/cuyahoga/trunk/lib

There you have it! Using those files will allow you to get everything running in a medium trust environment!

There are a couple of things that I found during my search that troubled me. There have been a lot of people who have had this issue. I would think that the open source project creators, especially NHibernate, would create source code that works in a medium trust environment. They won't. Making people do it themselves isn't necessarily a bad thing, but everyone doesn't want to spend time struggling to get things done. That is one of the things that makes Entity Framework appealing to the masses - for the most part, it just works.

Here is a link to one particularly onerous discussion surrounding the issue involving users and the Nhibernate developers. I found the whole character of the discussion to be completely distasteful. It shouldn't be so hard to do something that is so easy.

http://groups.google.com/group/nhusers/browse_thread/thread/dbfa6840d42f4c12/0db76f949568f947?lnk=gst&q=medium+trust#0db76f949568f947

If you have this issue, don't fret, worry or drive yourself insane. Just get those files and make it happen. Do not, I repeat, do not disable lazy loading for NHibernate to make it work in a medium trust environment. That defeats the whole purpose of the tool.

Smooches,

Kila

How To Tell What Happened When Publish Failed In ASP.NET MVC

This is a simple one. If you use the Publish feature in Visual Studio, you might be wondering how you can tell why a publish fails. The reason could be anything from an image file not being loaded in a project, to something more serious. To find out, you can click on View and then select Output to see exactly why the publish failed. Wasn't that simple?
Smooches,
Kila

How To Uninstall Internet Explorer 9 Beta

I made a mistake. I should have known better than to install a Microsoft Beta product. I love Microsoft, but their Beta products have some real quirks sometimes (I know....hence the term Beta). I usually wait - never wanting to be first in that arena. However, I decided to take a chance on Internet Explorer 9 Beta. The install SEEMED to go smoothly. The computer restarted, but I would get an error when I tried to use IE9. Every single time I clicked on it, I got the dreaded Windows has an error message and then Windows is checking for a solution message. Over and over. I tried all of the instructions provided by Microsoft to fix it, but I finally decided that I didn't and don't have the time to work through the issues. I need IE for development purposes and it HAS to work for me so I did an uninstall. However, when I went to do my uninstall, I couldn't find IE9! Since anything that is added has to have a way to be removed, I started searching to find it. I did and here is the solution so you won't have to spend as much time as I did.
On Windows 7 here is what you do:

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Select Programs And Features
3. In the upper left hand corner, select View Installed Updates
4. You will be provided with a list of updates, but you will likely not see Windows Internet Explorer 9 clearly in the list
5. To find Windows Internet Explorer 9, go to the search box in the upper right hand corner and type in Windows Internet Explorer 9
6. Windows Internet Explorer 9 will magically appear and you should select it and then hit the Uninstall button.
7. The computer will uninstall the components and then ask you to restart.
8. Once you restart, you will need to set up some attributes of Internet Explorer 8 again, but you will be rid of Internet Explorer 9 and ready to rock and roll.

Whew....lets not EVER do that again until IE9 is ready - lol!

Smooches,

Kila