Problems with SQL Server 2005 Remote Connection

During execution of my project I had to access my virtual environment with Visio to do a Reverse Engineering in my database, and I got this error :

Error: Microsoft SQL Native Client: An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections.

Here I got a SQL Server WorkGroup and to solve this problem use the following link:

How to configure SQL Server 2005 to allow remote connections (link)

Other important thing is to pay attention always remember to validate the server name when you creating a connection. Here I have a lot of Virtual Machines and sometimes the start up with the same name. Just pay attention, and if you have this case use the [IP]\[Instance_Name].

Solving Disallowed Parent Path Error

Today I was installing an ASP 3.0 Web site evaluate an ASP to ASP.net migration... and because that I start to get old kind of problems (nothing like a long time away from ASP 3.0).

I created and Virtual PC with Windows Server 2003, IIS6 and configure my Virtual Directory... and for my surprise I got this error message :

Active Server Pages error ''ASP 0131''

Disallowed Parent Path

/site/index.asp, line 1

The Include file ''../include/conn.asp'' cannot contain ''..'' to indicate the parent directory.



After some Microsoft KB search I found this :

Enable Parent Paths Is Disabled by Default in IIS 6.0 (link)

If you get the same error the workaround is:

1. On IIS, right click on you site/Virtual Directory, Properties

2. Click on Configuration

3. On Options tab

4. Select Enable Parent Paths

See ya!

SEO and .NET

In a recently chat with my friend José Papo we discuss about SEO and how can I make my blog more readable and searchable.

20 minutes after configure my Google Analitcs, Google WebMaster Tools and read his post about how to optimize sites for search engines (portuguese), I start to think how can I do this with .NET and its links, how can I help my customers with that.

Searching Amazon I found an intersting book, that is already in my wishlist for the next month:

• Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET: A Developer's Guide to SEO (amazon) (wrox)

• What you will learn from this book

• Understand the criteria that influence search engine rankings
• Create keyword-rich URLs using ASP.NET, ISAPI_Rewrite, and UrlRewriter.NET
• Use HTTP Headers to properly indicate the status of web documents
• Create optimized content and cope with duplicate content effectively
• Avoid being the victim of black hat SEO techniques
• Understand and implement geo-targeting and cloaking
• Use site maps effectively—for users as well as search engines
• SEO enhancements that can easily be applied to an existing web site
• Build a search engine–friendly e-commerce catalog
• In my recent projects a common requirement is how to make my site more searchable. How to change my links in ASP.NET to make them more compliance with search engines.

Just to define :

(Wiki) Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords.

I found an article that contains one way to do this :

Developing SEO friendly URLs with ASP NET 2.0 (link)

Tips using SQL Profiler :: Performance Workout

As a known problem, performance always fails when you don't think before start coding.

In an earlier suport I got a report that fails by timeout. Like I presume the SQL Queries was not optimeze and a lot of "SELECT *" was found.

To understand better where the problem is I used my preferred tool when I work with SQL Server. The SQL Profiler.

I got a good links to start work with it :

- Step-By-Step: An introduction to SQL Server Profiler
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-6329_11-5054787.html

And remember, always design before code!

See ya!

Back Blogging...

After one year (almost) I'm return blogging.

Monday (12/03) starts here in Brazil the Tech Ed 2007. I'm very exciting with that and after Tech I will use Visual Studio 2008 hardly.

See ya, and welcome back (for me)!

Commerce Server Environment Changes Troubleshooting

Recently I had to get all the webservers from my development enviroment to my client developmet environment and plug them into its network. In this cenario all changes, the Active directory, the Commerce Server databases, etc.

Unfortunately after reconfigure the IIS application pools identity and set the correct permission to the new administrators for this new AD, when I started the Commerce Server Manager it failed. Another similar behavior is to failed the snap-in.

Looking for this CSConfig options I had to run the : CSCONFIG.EXE /F to force the new configuration.

After thar the initian CS Configuration Wizard shows up.

If you had the configuration file for this enviroment you just have to load it, if not hit next.

Get the SQL Server name and instance (if you use it) for the MSCS_Admin. I my case my client changed the MSCS_Admin database name, this can cause problem if you are not alert for that. Make sure that you type the correct Admin Database name for this Commerce server environment.

Choose the correct authentication mode and hit next.


For this webservers I didn't install the Direct Mailer and CS Staging and this is all that I had to do. If you use Direct Mailer remember to configure the correct Direct Mailer user and database server because in this cenario you already have an enviroment running.

That's all, your webserver is now able to run.

TechEd Brazil 2006

The TechEd Brazil 2006 was a great event. For the opening session a good introduce by Gabriel, O pensador and good performances between the presentations.

For the Brazilian public the high point was present the products in PT-BR. All here now how long takes to this kind of products gets his Brazilian version.

Other good point was the presence of Microsoft Vice-President, Microsoft Brazil President, and the most famous 3D Brazilian Designer Hans Donner. All they made a good impression in the event.

The Windows Vista presentation was very good and I believe, different for XP, everybody who can will migrated very soon. I'm already on Vista. On the next posts I'll show some tips to continues works fine, like in XP.

The most exciting demonstration was the Exchange 2007 and the PABX integration. Really amazing!

In the following days we had a lot of presentations, hands on lab and a lot of talk in the community lounge. I asked to the responsible of MSDN Brazil about Commerce Server Forum in Brazilian lands and she told me that we have to warm up this product here. As we know Commerce Server is present in some big player in Brazilian E-commerce but not enter already in the B2B, G2C and C2C as it was in B2C. But I'm still confident that this kind of product increase his production here, maybe even with some spefic features.

The other highlights was Office System 2007 Sharepoint, ASP.net Ajax, XAML, WCF. This products will make a big noise the 2007. For presentation, ASP.net Ajax are a present reality and XAML (WPF) will be a promisor product, in my opinion this depends most like Vista will be accept by the user.

WCF shows his weapons in TechEd too.

There were good days, congratulations Microsoft for the great event.

BizTalk Commerce 2K7 Adapter Troubleshooting

Yesterday I receive an email with this error in the Biztalk Environment of my client.

"..Failed submitting message to BizTalk. Message: String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.."

The Biztalk Project, that throw an error, works to delivery Commerce Server Orders to a backoffice system. This error starts without a specific reason so I start to investigate.

First I execute the steps of Biztalk Adapters Troubleshooting, from Commerce Server Documentation (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa545867.aspx).

I find two occurrences : Abandoned Registry Entries and Last Run Times Written to the System Registry I verify the date changes to 1/1/1753.

To fix it I backup the registry and change the date to the actual date. After that I delete the Biztalk Project, install the project again and restart the Biztalk Service (Platform Setting > Host Instances > BizTalkServerApplication).

After that I check the receive locations and make sure that all Receive Pipeline are XMLReceive. (just because that make sense for this project).

The last check I did was the Regional Settings of the machine (Control Panel > Regional Language and Options), and I changed Portuguese(Brazil) to English (United States).

After that a simple reboot and the environment starts to run again.

See also the resume event :
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Commerce Server Orders Receive Adapter
Event Category: None
Event ID: 0

Description:
Failed submitting message to BizTalk. Message: String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.. Stack trace: at System.DateTimeParse.Parse(String s, DateTimeFormatInfo dtfi, DateTimeStyles styles)
at System.DateTime.Parse(String s, IFormatProvider provider)
at Microsoft.CommerceServer.Adapter.Orders.OrdersReceiveEndpoint.get_TimeWindow()
at Microsoft.CommerceServer.Adapter.Orders.OrdersReceiveEndpoint.SubmitBatch().

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.


Because of the untraceable nature of this kind of error I believe that type of things we will get resolved in the first Commerce 2k7 SP1.

Good Luck!

Commerce Server Webcasts

A good way to start (or migrate) to a new product is watching an Web Cast. I always look for this to get my first impression or to get more details about specific areas.

Se also the Microsoft Commerce Server Webcasts on TechNet :
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/comm/2007/webcasts.mspx

VStudio 2k5 SP1 Beta

The VS2k5-sp1 beta now available. The post in the MSDN's Site tells that they intend to ship the realease version in the next 3-4 months.

Visual Studio 2005 (SP1) Beta

The beta ends in October 30th.

Windows Vista RTM

So many news in the end of 2006.

Today Windows Vista goes RTM.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/

Let's study... 2007 will be a revolution year!

.NET Framework 3.0 has been released!

Continuing the "News!, News!, News!", today the .NET Framework 3.0 has been released.

To download the components go to :

http://www.netfx3.com/blogs/news_and_announcements/default.aspx

• .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components
• Windows SDK for Vista and the .NET Framework 3.0
• Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation)
• Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF)

Office 2007 RTM

As you can read in Mohammad's Blog, the Office 2007
is going to be released. Like him I'm very excited with the "new" Sharepoint and the WWF (Windows Workflow Foundation).

Very soon I'll post some code samples about WWF.

Check those links:

http://blogs.msdn.com/mohammadakif/archive/2006/11/06/office-2007-released-to-manufacturing.aspx

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/FX100487411033.aspx?pid=CL100571081033

The Beginning

I decided to write a blog to share and discus ideas, talk about Microsoft products, software architecture and coding, coding, coding. To introduce a little bit of my profile, as you can see my name is Willian Leite and I’m writing from Brazil.

Here I’m a Solution Architect for Microsoft Products of my company. I’ve been work with Microsoft products since 2000 and the first one was Commerce Server 2000. Since then I worked with CMS, Sharepoint and all kind of family products take my special attention.

In my actual project I'm work with Commerce Server 2007, SQL Server 2005, Biztalk Server 2006 all under Windows Server 2003 R2. In Brazil we always have a good numbers of customization in this Microsoft Products, to make then fit to the Brazilian market. It is for that reason that kind of products look more like a framework then a regular “install-use” product.

Feel free and let's go!