C# talk

Cohesion And Coupling

2008-10-28T11:28:00.002+03:00

Dear Developers/All:

Many of you have already heard about the terms "tight coupling", "loose coupling" and "cohesion", i did too and while reading in the MSDN magazine i found very interesting article about this topic and would like to share it with you and hope you will find it useful when designing your code and i am sure it is.

Check it out @: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc947917.aspx

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Is SOA a Product?

2008-10-23T15:16:00.002+03:00

HI All,

Many of us hear about SOA, some of them are experts in that domain but the majority wonder is SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) a product that we can buy or what is it exactly. I have read very useful article and simple one and would like to share it with you, it explains about SOA in a simple way that will let you understand what is SOA when you discuss this with any IT professional.

Check it out at http://www.microsoft.com/soa/about/faq.aspx#bpmfaq

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Microsoft Learning Snacks

2008-10-19T14:20:00.003+03:00

Hi all:

Check out the MS learning snacks @ http://www.microsoft.com/learning/snacks/default.mspx which includes free presentations for the latest technologies.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Video Streaming in SharePoint 2007/Media Player in SharePoint 2007

2008-09-22T11:11:00.002+03:00

The idea came that I need to do video streaming in SharePoint 2007, I did small research and found 2 ways to do such a thing:

Method1:

1. Add Content Editor Web Part into your page.
2. Edit the properties of the web part.
3. Click the “Source Editor”
4. Simply copy and paste this code:

<\OBJECT id="VIDEO" CLASSID="CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6" type="application/x-oleobject">
<\PARAM NAME="URL" VALUE="http://sitename:42875/Documents/CocaCola-Jump.wmv">
<\PARAM NAME="animationatStart" VALUE="true">
<\PARAM NAME="transparentatStart" VALUE="true">
<\PARAM NAME="SendPlayStateChangeEvents" VALUE="True">
<\PARAM NAME="AutoStart" VALUE="false">
<\PARAM name="uiMode" value="mini">
<\PARAM name="AutoRewind" value="true">
<\param name=enableContextMenu value=false>
<\OBJECT>

Explanation: the idea behind this code is simply you create an object with a classid that indicates windows media player version 7. This code will create an embedded instance of windows media player and plays the video you uploaded in your document library.

Method2: Media Player Web Part

It’s a readymade media player web part that runs an instance of windows media player and plays all the type of files the player can play, and the credit for this web part goes to the owner who built it as you will see in the link.

1. Download the web part from this link: http://www.sharepointblogs.com/files/folders/ajp/entry3059.aspx
2. Copy the mediaplayerwebpart.dll to the bin folder of your MOSS web site.
3. Open the web.config of your site and add SafeControl entry like this: <\SafeControl Assembly="MediaPlayerWebPart, version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=4907dffeafb11512" Namespace="NFWebParts" TypeName="*" Safe="True" />
4. Inside your site, go to Site Actions > Site Settings > Modify All Site Settings > Gallery > Web Parts
5. Click New > select the media player web part > populate gallery
6. Now your web part is there, you can use it in any page and play videos

Hope this article was useful for all.

Regards,
Hamzeh Ayesh

form submission exceeded the maximum length error message when you upload a file to your Windows SharePoint Services Web site

2008-09-22T09:53:00.000+03:00

Problem:
I was trying to upload a file of a 50 MB size in a SharePoint document library and I got this error due to exceeding the maximum allowed file size: “Unhandled Exception: Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: The form submission cannot be processed because it exceeded the maximum length allowed by the Web administrator. Please resubmit the form with less data”.

Cause:
This problem happened due to exceeding the maximum upload size limit.

Resolution:
You can resolve this problem by raising the max allowed upload limit in one of 2 ways:
First method:
1. Go to SharePoint Central Administration.
2. Go to ” Application Management”.
3. Then go to “Web Application General Settings”
4. Go to the property “Maximum Upload Size” and change the max upload size to whatever you want.

Second method:
This way I found it in the web but personally it didn’t work with me but you can try it also and see if it reflect .
1. Go to your web.config file of your SharePoint site.
2. Change the value of the property maxRequestLength to whatever size you prefer as: <\httpRuntime maxRequestLength="51200" />

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion, you need administrator privileges to be able to start the service

2008-09-11T13:52:00.003+03:00

Problem:

I was trying to access my SharePoint site and it wasn’t opening, I found that the SQL Server services was not running and when I tried to run it, it failed and generated the error: “The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion, you need administrator privileges to be able to start/stop this service. (SQLSAC)”

Cause:

I have searched the even log and found the error: “The file "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\MSSQL\DATA\mastlog.ldf" is compressed but does not reside in a read-only database or file group. The file must be decompressed.” I did search the web and found that the cause of such error happens because all the files related to the SQL under the path “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\MSSQL\DATA\” was all compressed. This could happen due to many reasons but in my case it happened because I run the windows disk cleanup tool to clean temporary and unused files and this service compressed few files and part of them was the SQL data files.

Resolution:

Simply go to the path “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\MSSQL\DATA\” or any other reported paths, then right click the file and remove the compressed property then try to run the service again and it will work smoothly.

I guess it’s an interesting one and hope this helps too.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion, you need administrator privileges to be able to start/stop service

2008-08-21T16:09:00.001+03:00

Problem:

I was trying to run the SQL 2005 service but it failed and generated the error: “The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion, you need administrator privileges to be able to start/stop this service. (SQLSAC)”

Cause:

I have searched the even log and found the error: “The file "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\MSSQL\DATA\mastlog.ldf" is compressed but does not reside in a read-only database or file group. The file must be decompressed.” I did search the web and found that the cause of such error happens because all the files related to the SQL under the path “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\MSSQL\DATA\” was all compressed. This could happen due to many reasons but in my case it happened because I run the windows disk cleanup to clean temporary and unused files and this service compressed few files and part of them was the SQL data files.

Resolution:

Simply go to the path “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\MSSQL\DATA\” or any other reported path, then right click and remove the compressed property then try to run the service again and it will work smoothly.
I guess it’s an interesting one and hope this helps too.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Filter Listbox Based on Textbox Value

2008-08-20T16:53:00.004+03:00

Helloz:

I was trying to filter a Listbox based on the value entered in a textbox filed in ASP.NET application. Wanted to do this on the client side. I have searched the web and found a very useful article and would like to share it since many developers would like to do the same in thier business applications.

Check it out @:
http://forums.asp.net/t/1263755.aspx

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

SharePoint Server 2007 Developer Portal

2008-08-18T09:37:00.000+03:00

Hellozzz:

I was browsing the web and found this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905503.aspx
Which is a main reference a SharePoint developer may need, it has lots of useful articles between “Getting Started”, “How Do I”, best practices and others so thought of sharing it. Check it out and enjoy.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Ajax Error: Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerTimeoutException

2008-06-30T19:33:00.003+03:00

Problem:

I was working in a project, an ASP.NET web project which is Ajax enabled. While debugging the code I got this error: Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerTimeoutException

Cause:

The cause of this problem is that the Ajax extensions framework has its callback timeout set to 90 seconds by default so when you put breakpoint and while debugging the code, if your time exceeded the 90 seconds, it will show that error. This error could happen of you retrieve huge data that exceeds the 90 seconds or any other scenario.

Resolution:

In order to solve this, you have to set the “AsyncPostBackTimeOut” for the script manager to your preferred period in seconds like this:

<^asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server" AsyncPostBackTimeout="1200"^>

And that’s it.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Duplicate Controls Ids in Visual Studio .NET

2008-06-27T11:13:00.001+03:00

Problem:

I have faced a very interesting problem in visual studio while working in one of the projects which is linked to VSS (visual source safe), I was putting Ajax tab container control and inside each tab there was a multi view control with different view controls, so while copying grids and other controls (buttons, text boxes) between the tabs and after writing lots of code, every time I do check in to the file and then return back to it, I don’t find anything from the code I wrote. I have tried many possibilities trying to figure out the problem and see why the changes are not being saved to VSS.

Cause:

After doing research and investigation, I found out that the reason behind this error was that there used to be duplicate controls ids that happened while copying the controls between the tabs and visual studio feels this duplication when doing check in and when finding error it wasn’t saving the last modifications to VSS.

Resolution:

Of course after this scenario, always make sure no duplication in controls ids in your source code by doing general build before doing check in or you can run your application is runnable then do Check in.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

SharePoint Tools

2008-06-07T11:45:00.001+03:00

Hi,

I was searching the web for new articles related to SharePoint and found a site which has a nice collection of SharePoint tools which personally I found very useful, so check it out @ http://www.thesug.org/live/Lists/Tools/AllItems.aspx

Enjoy.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

SharePoint – Duplicate fields, controls

2008-06-07T11:42:00.001+03:00

Problem:

I have faced an issue while trying to place more than “Page Image” field in a page layout in SharePoint designer, the issue is when I drag and drop the same “Page Image” field (control) to the page and even if they have different Ids, once you save your layout and go back to SharePoint itself and try to create a page based on that page layout or even edit an existing one, if you select any image inside that page image field, this image will get duplicated to all the images fields in the page.

Cause:

The reason behind this is that in SharePoint Designer you dropped those fields in the page layout from the same content field which is the “Page Image” (as an example) and even though they have different Ids but SharePoint will be referencing them all as the same field in the page inside the SharePoint Portal.
Resolution:
In order to solve this issue, all what you have to do is the following:
1. Check which page layout your current page is using.
2. For that page layout, check which content type it’s using.
3. Go to the content type and add new columns with the same type you want, for example in my case, I have added 4 “Page Image” columns.
4. Go back to your page layout in the SharePoint Designer, drag and drop the “Page Image” columns/fields/controls (all have the same meaning here) to your page.
5. Save and publish your page layout.
6. Now in SharePoint portal, if you edit your page (which is based on the template you have modified), you can place images in each of the image controls and you will have them totally separated from each other.

Hope this hint is useful.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

SharePoint Error - LoadBalancer.RegisterLauncher failed: Unable to connect to the remote server

2008-06-07T10:14:00.003+03:00

Problem:

I was checking the event log once and found out that it’s logging instantly the above error which is killing the machine performance without noticing this. I have searched into this problem and found that many people are suffering from the same problem.

Cause:

There could be many possibilities for this:
1. Check the credentials of your Shared Services Provider (SSP), you may need to change it to a user who has higher privilege.
2. Another possibility would be that you are having problem with your SSP for example if you deleted a web application which your SSP was counting on.

Resolution:

In order to solve this problem and according to the possibility would be as follows:
1. You can go to the central administration>operations>services on server and stop the “Document Conversions Launcher Service” and “Document Conversions Load Balancer Service” services if you don’t need them.
2. Another option will be to create a new SSP and change the association of all the web apps to point to that new SSP

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

SharePoint SSP Site – Page not found error

2008-04-08T19:40:00.001+03:00

Problem:
I have faced a problem when trying to access the SSP site (Shared Services Provider) I was getting page not found error.

Cause:
After doing long investigation on this issue, I have found that the problem happened because initially when I created my first web application (SharePoint Site) with the installation of SharePoint and then created and associated my SSP with it, the link for my SSP was http://servername/ssp/admin and this application was running under port 80. Later on, when I have changed the SharePoint site (web application) to be 90 ( http://servername:90 ), the SSP will continue to have the same link http://servername/ssp/admin assuming that the site is running under port 80 which is not valid anymore and will cause the “PAGE NOT FOUND” error because the main site is now http://servername:90 and not http://servername

Solution:
There are many solutions if you faced this problem.
1. Simply you access your SSP by putting the right link of the server with the correct port number like http://servername:90/ssp/admin

2. Another solution to avoid this problem is that whenever you create a web application (SharePoint Site) and wants to change its default port, do it then create your SSP and associate it with the application.

3. A third solution will be to create a new SSP and then associate it with your site and you can delete the old SSP.
I hope this article was useful because it took effort to figure it out.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Enable Search feature in MOSS 2007

2008-04-08T19:39:00.000+03:00

Search feature in MOSS 2007 is a great feature and also a big one, it has many aspects between defining your own key words, adding new file types to be searched, searching contents from outside the SharePoint site and many others, but here I will focus on how to enable the search functionality in your site to be able to search your site’s content as follows:

1. Go to your “Site Actions” menu on your site -> Site Settings -> Modify All Site Settings
2. Go to “Search Visibility”
3. Select “Allow this web to appear in search results” to Yes
4. Select “Always index all ASPX pages on this site”
5. Then in your SharePoint Central Administration, go to Operations tab
6. Go to “Services on Server”
7. Run your “Office SharePoint Server Search” service with the correct credentials.
8. Also in the SharePoint Central Administration, go to your Shared Services Provider link
9. Go to “Search Settings”
10. Select “Content sources and crawl schedules”
11. Hover over the link “Local SharePoint Server Sites” and select “Start Full Crawl” in order to start indexing all your site contents.
12. Go to your SharePoint site and start searching.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Service Unavailable - SharePoint Site

2008-04-01T09:34:00.002+03:00

Good Morning:

Problem:

Sometimes when you run your SharePoint Site you may face an error saying "Service Unavailable".

Cause of the Problem:

There could be many reasons behind this error to be accurate, but most probably this problem will happen if you change your current account password, what will happen is that the pool's identity that runs your SharePoint site was saved with the initial password when you created the SharePoint site so when you change this password, the pool will be still running under the old password which will cause this error to happen.

Solution:

1. Go to IIS->Application Pools-> select your pool -> right click -> properties -> identity tab and change the password to the new password.
2. Reset IIS
3. This should solve the problem.

Hint:
You can also go to the Administrative Tools -> Services and check all SharePoint services if any of them is running under your identity and reset to the new password if it was changed.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Visual Studio Bug - if you have reference in markup, they will not be renamed

2008-03-25T13:05:00.002+03:00

Hellozzz:

I have faced an interesting issue and thought of sharing it because it will happen randomly with developers. This issue is that when you try to rename a control ID in Visual Studio IDE, you will get this error: "if you have reference in markup, they will not be renamed" and if you press OK or Cancel nothing will happen and you will continue without being able to change the ID of any control.

I have searched or this problem and found out that it is a bug in VS IDE and i guess this problem is solved in SP1 of VS but not sure of this.

Cause of Problem:
This problem happens when you open more than one instance of VS IDE at the same time.

Solution:
You have to close all instances of VS IDE. You can do this by closing the VS IDE the normal way and also to make sure of this, just show the task manager and do END TASK fot any devene.exe process that is running. In the worst case just restart your machine and open VS and then it will work fine.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Microsoft Technology Day - Kuwait

2008-03-24T09:18:00.002+03:00

Dear technology passionate,

Feel free to register and attend the big Microsoft technology day happening in Kuwait on Mar 30, 2008 – InfoCenter. Check the site @ http://www.msexperts.net/ and register before loosing your seat.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Hide SharePoint Site Title

2008-03-13T16:16:00.005+03:00

HI All,

For sure many of you faced the challenge of removing the top title of a SharePoint site, especially that if you try to just remove the title from the properties of the Welcome page, SharePoint will continue to put "\" in the title of the portal, so in order to resolve this issue do the following:

1. Open you master page "yourpage.master" in any desinger, for example SharePoint desinger.

2. Go to the tag SharePoint:AspMenu

3. Add this attribute to the tag: StaticItemFormatString="{div style="'visibility:hidden'">{0}"{/div}

4. At the end, it should look like:
SharePoint:AspMenu ID="logoLinkId" runat="server" DataSourceID="SiteMapDataSourceRoot" StaticDisplayLevels="1" MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels="0" AccessKey="1" StaticItemFormatString={div style="'visibility:hidden'">{0}" { /div}" CssClass="logo" Width="262px"/>

Note: Please replace "{" with "<", i did this only for the sake of the HTML code to run within the blog.

Hope this helps.

If you feel this hint was useful, please add your comment on it.

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

SharePoint - Service Unavailable

2008-03-04T23:38:00.002+03:00

Hi,

I will talk here about a short hint but very important one, i was working with SharePoint 2007 and suddenly while browsing the site, it kept saying: Service Unavailabe. Of coure there could be many reasons for this error but the one that happened to me as follows: if you were running any SharePoint site POOL under certain IDENTITY, then later you changed the password of this account used as the pool identity, then you will face this error Service Unavailabe.

Simply what you can do is to check all the pools that are using this account as the identity and change the password to the new one and save, then reset IIS and things will go fine again.

Hope this was useful for you, if you faced any other problems then you can send me directly.

Regards,

Hamzeh

Changing SharePoint Site Port.

2008-02-03T09:22:00.000+03:00

Good Morning:

Here i will post a short but very useful tip on how to change the port of an existing SharePoint site since many of us when initially install Sharepoint, they give port 80 by default but leter on they found out the SharePoint is stopping the default site in IIS which will stop all other sites since SharePoint is taking the port 80.

Simply all what you have to do is the following:

1. Go to IIS.
2. Under Web Sites, go to SharePoint site (it should be SharePoint - 80).
3. Right click --> properties --> Web Site tab.
4. Change the TCP Port to 90 for example or any other port.
5. Press OK.
6. Go to SharePoint Central Admin.
7. Go to Operations tab.
8. Go to "alternate access mapping" under global configuration.
9. Select the URL for which you want to change the port number.
10. In the URL protocol field, just add the port you modified in IIS to be something like: http://localhost:90/
11. Note that 90 os the same port number you put in IIS.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Hamzeh

MOSS 2007 Design Component Relationships and Diagrams

2008-01-23T11:42:00.000+03:00

Dear Sharepointers:

I was in the stage of designing and building the strcuture of a portal which i will build in MOSS 2007, i was searching the web to really understand the desing components of MOSS 2007 between master pages, page lyouts, content types. I found a very very interesting and useful site, just read it and you will have clear picture of how all these components connected to each other.

Check it out: http://www.heathersolomon.com/blog/articles/MOSS07DesignComponents.aspx

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Hamzeh

Configuring a Office SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Site with Dual Authentication Providers and Anonymous Access

2008-01-08T16:54:00.000+03:00

Dear Sharepointers,

Many of you faced or will face a need that requires you to implement windows and forms authentications for a sharepoint portal plus allowing anonymous users to access public sections of the portal. I have did deep research in the web searching for this such a scenario and confidently i can tell that Andrew Connell article is one of the best or may be the best article that describes these requirments.

Please Check the link http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/articles/HowToConfigPublishingSiteWithDualAuthProvidersAndAnonAccess.aspx

which describes a step by step on how to do it. Just check it out and go do it.

If you have any questions please ask coz i already implemented it and it worked fine.

Regards,

Hamzeh

Install Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a stand-alone computer

2007-12-26T10:48:00.000+03:00

Hi All,

May be many of you installed the MOSS 2007 by thier hands and may others not, so if you are really interested to follow the correct steps on how to install moss 2007 on a stand alone computer, check this article.

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/bd99c3a9-0333-4c1c-9793-a145769e48e61033.mspx?mfr=true

Happy installation.

Regards,

Hamzeh

Sharepoint 2007 Max. Limitations

2007-12-26T08:55:00.000+03:00

Good Morning:

I have read a very interesting article about the list of max limitations in Sharepoint 2007. Check it out, it's very important.

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/bobbyhabib/archive/2007/09/17/sharepoint-2007-entity-hard-maximum-limitations.aspx

Regards,

Hamzeh

Bill Gates to visit UAE next month

2007-12-17T09:01:00.000+03:00

Hellozzzz:

Microsoft has confirmed that chairman Bill Gates will visit the UAE for the first time next month, for the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum (GLF) Arabia 2008.

http://www.itp.net/news/506389-bill-gates-to-visit-uae-next-month

Regards,

Hamzeh

Application Development on MOSS 2007

2007-12-16T16:53:00.000+03:00

Dear ASP.NET & SharePoint developers:

Many of you are wondering about the best approach to develop asp.net applications in sharePoint 2007. I have searched the web thoroughly about this and found a very interesting article that you must read. It summarizes the 4 methods to do so. Personally i prefer the last approach as you will see in the article, i better develop everything in asp.net that drop it inside the SharePoint website.

Check it out, it's very needful one.
http://blogs.msdn.com/cjohnson/archive/2006/09/05/application-development-on-moss-2007-amp-wss-v3.aspx

Regards,

Hamzeh

MOSS 2007 (Forms Authentication & Variations) Part 3

2007-12-16T16:16:00.000+03:00

Dear All,

As a series of customizing web content management Sharepoint Sites, here is Part 3 which talks about configuring site Forms authentication & site variations. It's a very important one.

Check it out: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa830817.aspx

Regards,

Hamzeh

Customizing and Branding Web Content Management in SharePoint 2007 Part 2

2007-12-12T11:40:00.000+03:00

HI All,

Check the part 2 of customizing and branding web content in SharePoint 2007 part 2, it talks about customizing style sheets, fields controls and other parts....

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa830815.aspx

Enjoy.

Regards,

Hamzeh

Testing AJAX Applications with VSTS 2008

2007-12-12T09:17:00.000+03:00

Hellozz:

Check out this articel, it's a useful one about testing AJAX Apps in VSTS 2008.

http://visualstudiomagazine.com/columns/article.aspx?editorialsid=2299

Regards,

Hamzeh

New Features in TFS 2008

2007-12-12T09:05:00.000+03:00

Hizzz,

Check out this short artice, it talks about the new features in TFS 2008 but especially focus on the version control features.

Check it out: http://visualstudiomagazine.com/columns/article.aspx?editorialsid=2364

Regards,

Hamzeh

Customizing Sharepoint 2007 Master Pages & Pages Layouts

2007-12-10T12:11:00.000+03:00

Dear Sharepoint lovers:

I have read this article about customizing SharePoint master pages and pages layouts, it's very interesting and thought of sharing it with you. It is a series of 3 parts and here is the link for part 1: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa830818.aspx

Enjoy it and tell me what do you think.

Regards,

HAmzeh

Empowering Developers with Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5

2007-11-27T11:49:00.000+03:00

Visual Studio 2008............

Check out this link: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2007/nov07/11-19developerqa.mspx

It highlights the new features of Visual Studio 2008 and how it is useful to the community... Enjoy.

Regards,

Hamzeh

Microsoft® Silverlight™ 1.0 Software Development Kit

2007-11-27T10:04:00.000+03:00

Dear Technology adapters:

I know most of you already heard about MS new technology Silverlight, i downloaded this development kit and thought of sharing it with you @: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=FB7900DB-4380-4B0F-BB95-0BAEC714EE17&displaylang=en

Regards,

HAmzeh

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

2007-11-27T09:56:00.000+03:00

Dear .NET people:

You can go and download MS .NET Framework 3.5 which contains many new features built on top of Framework 2.0 and 3.0 ....

Check it out on: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en

Regards,

Hamzeh

Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries

2007-10-04T16:12:00.000+03:00

Dear All,

For the developers who are really interested in debugging their code thoroughly till they debug the .NET framework source library, now it's all yours. Check it out here:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/03/releasing-the-source-code-for-the-net-framework-libraries.aspx

Regards,

Hamzeh

Protect the privacy of your personal information

2007-09-13T10:58:00.000+03:00

Dear Friends:

Check out this video @ http://www.microsoft.com/protect/videos/privacy.mspx and listen to the basics of how to make sure your data is protected over the web. Also check the other links on how to create strong passwords.

Enjoy.

Hamzeh

XML Notepad 2007

2007-09-09T10:03:00.000+03:00

Hellozzz:

Check out this tool, it provides a very simple interface for browsing and editing XML documents. http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7351396

Regards,

Hamzeh

Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 SDK (September 2007)

2007-09-09T09:57:00.000+03:00

HI:

For sure many of you heard about the Microsoft Silverlight technology, check the attached link. The Microsoft® Silverlight™ 1.0 SDK contains documentation, online samples, quickstarts and tools for developing Silverlight applications. Check it out @ http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7351395

Enjoy.

Hamzeh

Ajax Enable Existing ASP.NET Application

2007-09-05T10:39:00.000+03:00

Hizzzz,

I have watched some videos about Ajax and found it very interesting and especially to Ajax enable already exists ASP.NET application. I am sharing this topic in specific since I believe many of us have their ASP.NET applications and they want to Ajax enable it and use features of Ajax technology without rewriting the application from scratch with the Ajax controls.

Here are the simple steps you need to follow to Ajax enable your ASP.NET application:

1. Install the ASP.NET Ajax extensions from this link http://www.asp.net/ajax/downloads/

2. Open your ASP.NET application.

3. Open the web.config file

4. You have to modify your web.config file, i couldn't post the code here because the editor is not accepting it, as an alternative, open Visual Sudio and create new web site and select "ASP.NET Ajax Enabled Site" as an empty project and copy the generated web.config file content.

5. Now go to the Ajax Extensions tab in the Toolbox and drag and drop Script Manager Control.

6. And finally drag and drop UpdatePanel control and put all the controls you want
to Ajax it inside this panel.

7. That’s it, now your application is Ajax enabled. You will see that when posting pack the page, only the controls inside the panel are being updated and not the whole page.

Happy Ajax Time.

Regards,

Hamzeh

ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit

2007-09-03T11:46:00.000+03:00

Dear All,

Feel interested about the ASP .NET Ajax technology. Check out this site http://www.asp.net/ajax/downloads/ and download the ASP .NET Ajax Toolkit and enjoy the collections of Ajax controls. Check the samples included and see how you can use those controls.

Happy Ajax time.

Regards,

Hamzeh

SOA Paradox

2007-08-21T10:39:00.000+03:00

Dear All,

Read the below article, it's a very interesting one which talks about the SOA paradox and how people run behind the SOA but they don't know if they really need it or not and how to use it... It's a very interesting subject.

The SOA Marketing Paradox and the Wizard of Oz
Document ID: ZAPFLASH-2007816
Document Type: ZapFlash
By Jason Bloomberg
Posted: Aug. 16, 2007
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) presents a challenge to software marketing people like none other in recent history. On the one hand, SOA has been the top enterprise software bandwagon to jump on for the last four years or so, but on the other hand, many vendors have struggled to tell the proper SOA story for their products in a way that leads to increased sales and happy customers. The reason SOA presents such a formidable challenge is at once both subtle and obvious. After all, SOA is architecture -- it is a set of best practices enterprises follow to organize their IT resources to meet the needs of the business. SOA, however, is not, and never will be, a set of product features. And therein lies the rub. How do you position your product as a SOA product when SOA consists of best practices, not product features?
SOA and the Tin WoodmanFor both product management (what features should our products have?) and product marketing (how do we differentiate our products' value propositions in the marketplace?), the focus has always been on product features. Product management meets with customers to elicit requirements, which start with business problems they'd like the product to solve, but invariably end up with a discussion of desirable features. Product management then takes those requirements to engineering, who adds them to the product. Product marketing then takes over, figuring out how best to position the features of the product to gain the attention of prospects, differentiate their products from their competition, and then convince prospects to purchase the products.
This traditional product cycle breaks down, however, when SOA is a leading customer driver. Organizations want SOA, but they're not clear on what features they need from software to achieve their SOA goals. Product management ends up crafting a list of features (like Web Services standards support, for example) that should facilitate SOA at their customers. They feed these features into their product cycle, and eventually they end up with a "SOA product" of some sort.
This pattern is an example of what ZapThink likes to refer to as the Tin Woodman pattern. The Tin Woodman wanted a heart, so he went to the Wizard of Oz, who gave him a clock. The clock was clearly not a heart, but it had one relevant feature, namely it ticked. Compare that story to an enterprise who wanted SOA, so they went to their vendor of choice, who gave them a product with Web Services support. Web Services are clearly not SOA, but they offer standards support, the relevant feature.
The Tin Woodman pattern is virtually ubiquitous in the SOA marketplace today. For example, the term "SOA Middleware" is now gaining some currency, as an umbrella term that includes Enterprise Service Buses (ESBs), Service intermediaries, and other infrastructure software. Well, what does "SOA Middleware" really mean? Does it mean that if you buy it, you'll get SOA? That's about as likely as the Tin Woodman getting a real heart from the Wizard. Instead, what vendors mean by "SOA Middleware" is traditional middleware that offers a set of features that can potentially help their customers implement SOA. But no, you don't get SOA with your SOA Middleware.
Rethinking SOA Product Management and Product MarketingAs the SOA marketplace continues to mature, the SOA marketing paradox is developing an interesting wrinkle. Vendors continue to improve their products, adding increasingly powerful capabilities to their list of features. But as with any tool, the more powerful it is, the more dangerous it becomes in the hands of someone who doesn't fully understand how to use the tool. In other words, if the enterprise customer doesn't have the proper SOA best practices in place, then the more powerful the software they buy becomes, the less likely they'll be able to use it successfully in their SOA implementation. Adding features, therefore, can actually make the situation worse!
The solution to this paradox is actually rather obvious once you see it. For organizations to be successful with SOA, they need best practices, so vendors should give them best practices for the use of their software. In other words, vendors must understand how their product fits into SOA best practices. For example, building loosely coupled Services is a SOA best practice (or more accurately, a set of best practices) -- but it's easier said than done. It requires specific best practices related to Service contract creation and management, content based routing and transformations, SOA governance, quality, management (GQM), and more. Product marketing should therefore provide specific instructions to their customers as to how to achieve the benefits of loose coupling by leveraging their products.
This advice drives product marketing into new territory. Product marketers' comfort zones center on features and benefits, and we're recommending putting those features and benefits on the back burner, and instead focusing on creating architectural methodology artifacts that instruct customers on achieving specific SOA best practices. Most product marketers don't have the skills to create such artifacts, so they must seek assistance elsewhere, but the fact remains that best practices are not product features. Simply saying "our SOA Middleware product offers loose coupling" as though loose coupling were a feature is misleading at best, and entirely meaningless at worst. Instead, the vendor should say, "here is specific advice on what to do to achieve loose coupling, and here's how our product helps."
The Twilight of the Platform PlayZapThink has long espoused that products cannot give you SOA, because SOA is something you do, not something you buy. Enterprises must start with SOA best practices, and let those practices drive product selection, not the other way around. Resolving the SOA marketing paradox, however, takes this argument one step further, because we're shifting the responsibility for linking best practices and software products to the vendors of those products.
For vendors with SOA-specific point solutions, like many of the GQM vendors in this space, beginning with SOA best practices and fitting their products into them is straightforward, albeit difficult. For the larger SOA platform vendors, however, this advice goes contrary to the whole notion of a SOA platform. Because these larger vendors are seeking to assemble soup-to-nuts suites of software that give their customers everything they need to implement SOA, they believe that SOA best practices must necessarily derive from their platform features, not the other way around. In other words, if you buy into a platform vendor's SOA story, you'll need to do SOA their way.
The problem is, most of the platform vendors are heading in the wrong direction. They want to be a better Wizard of Oz, so they're adding more and more features to their clocks. Now the Tin Woodman gets two alarms, a nightlight, and who knows what else with his clock -- but of course, he's no closer to getting a heart than if his clock did nothing more than tick. From the enterprise perspective, SOA best practices involve leveraging heterogeneity to provide business agility. Vendors with point SOA solutions can tell this story -- "here are best practices for leveraging heterogeneity, and here's how our products help," but the platform vendors cannot. Instead, they must say, " here are our platform's SOA features, and here's how to use them." As a result, if you look closely at the platform vendor's "SOA" case studies, you'll see that most (or all) of them are not SOA stories at all, but rather examples of how customers implemented the vendor's software.
The ZapThink TakeSOA is at a crossroads. If the platform vendors have their way, history will regard SOA as a promising architectural approach that ended up being little more than a set of software features -- what ZapThink calls "The Great SOA Boondoggle." And yet, it doesn't have to be that way. More and more enterprises are coming to understand the true nature of SOA, and for those architects that do see the light, they aren't falling for the "SOA as product features" line. Furthermore, an increasing number of vendors are seeing the light as well, and are positioning their products as helping implement SOA best practices.
The moral of The Wizard of Oz, of course, is that the Tin Woodman and his companions possessed what they desired all along. The Tin Woodman didn't need anything from the Wizard at all, and while a clock gave him the ticking, the device was neither necessary nor sufficient for having a heart. Just so with SOA. Organizations who get the architecture right don't need the vendors to give them best practices, because best practices are essentially forms of human behavior independent of the technology. Once you have those best practices, the products you purchase can help you implement them, but the products will never be the source of the best practices themselves. The Tin Woodman was happy with his clock. Are you?

Regards,

Hamzeh

Maps in 3D: Install for Free

2007-08-21T09:54:00.000+03:00

Dear All,

Visit Live Search Maps and see locations in a new way with dramatic bird's eye and 3D views on
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7254821

Regards,

Hamzeh

Microsoft Code Name "Acropolis" CTP

2007-08-21T09:47:00.000+03:00

Dear All,

Microsoft code name "Acropolis" is a set of components and tools intended to make it easier for developers to build and manage modular, business-focused, client applications for Microsoft Windows on the .NET Framework, check it out on http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7254836

Regards,

Hamzeh

Duty Resumption

2007-08-20T00:11:00.000+03:00

Dear All,

I was in my annual vacation and will be resuming submitting new articles as before.

Regards,

Hamzeh

SQL Server 2008 CTP Released

2007-06-17T10:34:00.000+03:00

Katmai is set to ship in 2008 and the company is making it a central plank of its push into the business intelligence space. But Redmond is also building a number of developer-specific capabilities into the next-gen server release.

check it out on: http://reddevnews.com/news/article.aspx?editorialsid=8635

Regards,

Hamzeh

Accessing Web service

2007-05-25T23:12:00.000+03:00

Dear All,

I faced a very interesting issue as follows; I have web service inside my ASP .NET web application. Whenever I try to access the web service like http://LocalHost/AppName/WebServiceName.asmx I receive a message that the web service is not accessible.

Solution:
In order to solve this problem, you have to set the Identity of the pool under which the application is running to “Local System” instead of “Local Network”

Regards,

Hamzeh

SQL Server Default Port

2007-05-25T23:07:00.000+03:00

Dear all,

I have faced problem in the past few days which drive me crazy. I was trying to run web application from one web server and connect to a database in another Database server. It took me long time of investigation without hope and the application still not connecting to the database. After more and more research I found out the installed SQL server in not using the DEFAULT port which is 1433 but another port.

Solution:
Now the solution is to include the port in the connection string as follows:

Connection.ConnectionString = "Data Source=DB ServerName,PORT;Initial Catalog=DatabaseName;User ID=user;password=password";

Happy DB connection.

Regards,

Hamzeh

Microsoft executive outlines .Net roadmap

2007-04-28T14:07:00.000+03:00

HI Guys,

I have read this article about MS .NET roadmap, it's very interesting one for the people who are interested in MS technologies. Read it and enjoy.

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/devt/4E3773517D5BAACDCC2572B40002518D

Regards,

Hamzeh

SQL Server Compact 3.5 Books Online for Orcas Beta 1

2007-04-28T12:08:00.000+03:00

Hi All,

Download SQL Server Compact 3.5 Beta 1 Books Online and SQL Server Compact 3.5 Readme.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9ED47992-335D-4199-86CD-7B4F510E46DA&mg_id=10118&displaylang=en

Enjoy.

Hamzeh Ayesh

Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" Beta 1 (Team Foundation Server - Virtual PC Version)

2007-04-28T12:06:00.000+03:00

Daer All,

Microsoft Visual Studio code name "Orcas" is the next generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office system, and the Web.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A13CAE3D-8EC1-4D84-8620-D82E832391D7&mg_id=10118&displaylang=en

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" Beta 1 Team Suite (Virtual PC Version)

2007-04-28T12:04:00.000+03:00

Dear All,

Microsoft Visual Studio code name "Orcas" is the next generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office system, and the Web.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=36B6609E-6F3D-40F4-8C7D-AD111679D8DC&mg_id=10118&displaylang=en

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Get a Free Trial of Expression Web

2007-04-28T12:01:00.000+03:00

Dear Designer/Developer:

Try the new professional tool for Web designers, plus check out other Microsoft Expression betas and trials.

http://www.microsoft.com/Expression/products/overview.aspx?key=web

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

SQL Server Migration Assistant for Oracle V3.0

2007-04-17T16:36:00.000+03:00

Hi all,

SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) is a complete suite of tools that dramatically cuts the effort, cost, and risk of migrating from Oracle to SQL Server. Check it out @

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0e06a04c-d0c3-4f31-b201-fbe7c25f32fb&mg_id=10116&displaylang=en

Happy Migration.

Regards,

Hamzeh

Paint.NET (with .NET Framework 2.0) 3.05

2007-04-03T15:11:00.000+03:00

Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows...... check out the link for more information about this tool.

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/PaintNET_with_NET_Framework_20/1096481993/2

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Scripting for IT Pros

2007-03-22T17:15:00.000+03:00

“How Do I?” with ASP.NET AJAX

2007-03-14T18:46:00.000+03:00

Hello All,

Enjoy the new "How Do I" with ASP .NET AJAX vedio series @ http://asp.net/learn/videos/default.aspx?tabid=63#ajax

Cheers,

Hamzeh Ayesh

Asirra… Protecting your web site

2007-03-11T19:32:00.000+03:00

Check out the new way of protecting your website, a new HIP way to incorporate into your website for authentication from Microsoft.

http://research.microsoft.com/asirra/

Enjoy…

Hamzeh Ayesh

New MS Web Development Learning Series...

2007-02-13T19:11:00.000+03:00

Hi All,

Check out the new Web Development Learning Series contains over 80 learning modules, including virtual labs, on-demand and live webcasts.....

Regards,

Hamzeh Ayesh

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Released

2007-02-07T12:24:00.000+03:00

Feel interested in developing and running AJAX-style applications?!!! Then check the new ASP .NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions 1.0 @ http://ajax.asp.net/default.aspx