SQL Server Compact 4.0 Tooling in Visual Studio 2010

I developed a program which uses SQL Server Compact. Initially it was developed creating SQL Server COmpact 4.0 databases. Now after reinstalling my laptop, I tried to open the database, but it appaered I was missing the necessary tooling for SQL Server Compact 4.0, I could only open/create SQL Server Compact 3.5 databases.

I've immediatly installed the SQL Server Compact 4.0 runtime, which can be found here.
But this however didn't seem to be enough... I still couldn't open my created SQL compact database.

What I needed to do, was install some additional software using Microsoft Web Platform Installer 3.0.
Make sure you install these packages:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1
• Microsoft Visual Studion 2010 SP1 Tools for SQL Server Compact 4.0

Note that selecting and installing the Visual Studio 2010 SP1 or the Visual Web Developer Express 2010 SP1 also installs the SQL Server Compact 4.0 components that are needed for the tooling support. These components are called as Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Tools for SQL Server Compact 4.0 and SQL Server Compact 4.0. The Web Platform Installer automatically detects whether these components are already installed on the machine, and if they are not installed, the Web Platform Installer will install them. There is no need to separately select the SQL Server Compact 4.0 components in the Web Platform Installer.

The installer for visual studio SP1 can also be found here.

Promote using Correlation initialisation inside a loop

I assume you already know how to promote properties when sending a message from an orchestration to the messagebox.
This can of course be achieved by initializing a correlation set with containing all context properties you like to promote. But that 's not why I'm posting this blog. If you need more info on how to promote properties from an orchestration I'll refer you to this blog.

Problem

The problem is when you try to do this from a send shape inside a loop, you'll get an error when building the project in visual studio.
The received error is "Correlation set may be initialized only once".

Solution

The solution to this issue is actually real easy. All you have to do is create a scope inside the loop. And place the send shape (and even other shapes if needed) in the created orchestration. The benefit of the orchestration is that you can define the correlation set on the scope itself (instead of as a global correlation set).
Now can initialize your correlation set on your send shape inside the scope.

And that's all you'll have to do!! It really is that easy! :)

Some neat tools for Biztalk / .NET developers

I bundled some handy free tools to help you develop and / or debug your (BizTalk) applications.

soapUI

soapUI is a free and open source cross-platform Functional Testing solution, a tool for SOA testing.
soapUI allows you to easily and rapidly create and execute automated functional, regression, compliance, and load tests. In a single test environment, soapUI provides complete test coverage and supports all the standard protocols and technologies.

http://www.eviware.com/soapUI/soapui-products-overview.html

linqpad

LINQPad lets you interactively query databases in a modern query language: LINQ.

LINQPad supports everything in C# 4.0 and Framework 4.0:

• LINQ to Objects
• LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework
• LINQ to XML
• Parallel LINQ

http://www.linqpad.net/

testdriven.net

TestDriven.Net makes it easy to run unit tests with a single click, anywhere in your Visual Studio solutions. It supports all versions of Microsoft Visual Studio and it integrates with the best .NET development tools.

http://www.testdriven.net/

ssmstoolspack

SSMS Tools Pack is an add-in for Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. It contains a few upgrades to the SSMS IDE

http://www.ssmstoolspack.com/

deployment framework for biztalk

The Deployment Framework for BizTalk eliminates the pain associated with BizTalk application deployments, and goes far beyond BizTalk’s out-of-the-box deployment functionality. It also includes additional tools to enhance developer productivity, such as binding file management.

http://biztalkdeployment.codeplex.com/

biztalkcop

A set of FxCop rules for enforcing coding standards on BizTalk projects. First release includes configurable naming rules based on Scott Colestock's published conventions.

http://biztalkcop.codeplex.com/

smsniff

SmartSniff is a network monitoring utility that allows you to capture TCP/IP packets that pass through your network adapter, and view the captured data as sequence of conversations between clients and servers.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/smsniff.html

bizunit

BizUnit is a flexible and extensible declarative test framework targeted that rapidly enables the automated testing of distributed systems, for example it is widely used to test BizTalk solutions. BizUnit is fully extensible. Its approach is to enable test cases to be constructed from generic reusable test steps, test cases are defined in XML which allows them to be auto-generated and also enables the ‘fixing up’ of Url’s for different environments, e.g. test, staging and production environments. Defining test cases in XML enables test cases to be auto-generated.

http://bizunit.codeplex.com/

resharper

ReSharper is a renowned productivity tool that makes Microsoft Visual Studio a much better IDE.

http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

dansharp xmlviewer

DanSharp XmlViewer is a lightweight XPath generation and testing tool, making it easy to generate and test XPath queries. It also allows for validation of Xml documents against schemas, display of Xml documents in tree-view format, and generation of BizUnit test cases.

http://dansharpxmlviewer.codeplex.com/

bts terminator

A tool which allows for common biztalk problems to be addressed by scripts provided by the biztalk team. Replaces terminate.vbs with more functionality including the ability to suspend, resume and terminate by date range. Powershell script functionality provided for performance tuning. Integration with mbvcleanupscripts.xml from the messagebox viewer utility

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=2846
Guideline on biztalkadminsblogging.com

debugview

DebugView is an application that lets you monitor debug output on your local system, or any computer on the network that you can reach via TCP/IP. It is capable of displaying both kernel-mode and Win32 debug output.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896647

msbuild explorer extension

The MSBuild Extension Pack provides a collection of over 400 MSBuild Tasks, MSBuild Loggers and MSBuild TaskFactories.

http://msbuildextensionpack.codeplex.com/

ilspy

ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler.

http://wiki.sharpdevelop.net/ILSpy.ashx

biztalk map documenter

The BizTalk Map Documenter stylesheet will transform a a BizTalk map into an HTML view containing the following information:

• The node links between source and destination schemas.
• All functoids used in the map are displayed with their parameters.
• Chained functoids are displayed as nested “function” calls.
• Labels
• Constants
• For HL7 schemas where source and desitnation are the same message type, links between different nodes are highlighted.

http://biztalkmapdoc.codeplex.com/

msxsl.exe

The msxsl.exe command line utility enables you to perform command line Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) transformations using the Microsoft XSL processor.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21714

Microsoft BizTalk LoadGen 2007

Microsoft LoadGen 2007 generates message transmission loads to run performance and stress tests for your Microsoft BizTalk Server applications, and provides performance counters to monitor the performance of the infrastructure running BizTalk Server.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=14925

BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer

he BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer V1.2 examines a BizTalk Server 2006, BizTalk Server 2006 R2, or BizTalk Server 2010 deployment and generates a list of issues pertaining to best practices standards for BizTalk Server deployments.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=15963

Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL)

The PAL (Performance Analysis of Logs) tool is a new and powerful tool that reads in a performance monitor counter log (any known format) and analyzes it using complex, but known thresholds (provided). The tool generates an HTML based report which graphically charts important performance counters and throws alerts when thresholds are exceeded.

http://pal.codeplex.com/

Log Parser 2.2

Log parser is a powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows® operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=24659

Process Explorer

The unique capabilities of Process Explorer make it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Message Box Viewer

The goal of MBV is to retrieve the maximum amount of information from a BizTalk System in one click in the minimum amount of time, identify all possible issues which could be critical or need attention and present them in a user friendly format.

More info: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jpierauc/archive/2008/07/22/msgboxviewer-mbv-q-a.aspx%22
http://blogs.technet.com/b/jpierauc/archive/2007/12/18/msgboxviewer.aspx

TCP Trace

Used to monitor text based network traffic between client and server. Useful while using adapters like SOAP,HTTP,POP3 etc to see the message travelling via the wire.

http://www.pocketsoap.com/tcptrace/

DTCPing

This tool is designed to assist with troubleshooting Microsoft DTC Firewall Issues, which you'll often see in a multiserver BizTalk deployment.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=2868
BizTalk Message Decompressor

This tool enables you to decompress BizTalk messages/context from a screen that looks like SQL Query Analyzer.

http://btsdecompress.codeplex.com/

BTS Project build error on string message

Today Is was making an orchestration that contains a Multi-Part message type, with a message part of type System.String. When building the BizTalk Project it returned the error "'System.String' must be Xml serializable to be a message part type". I've tried several things, but it kept giving this same error no matter what I tried. But I was certain I had used System.String parts in an orchestration before, without any problems. So after some debugging, I tried restarting Visual Studio... and this seemed to do the trick! Apparantly all ik took to succesfully build the biztalk project was restarting Visual Studio.

Visual Studio: VS templates missing

I was unable to add an aspx page to my web site solution.
The error I got from Visual Studio was:

"Could not find file 'c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplatesCahce\Web\Csharp\1033\WebForm.zip\WebForm_cb.aspx'."

This was the solution:

1. Open "Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt"
2. Run the command: "devenv /installvstemplates"

And that was all to solve my problem!

Microsoft Lightswitch coming on July 26

Microsoft’s LightSwitch to Launch on July 26. This program will give developers a simpler and faster way to create high-quality business applications for the desktop and the cloud. LightSwitch is a new addition to the Visual Studio family.

I've already been playing with Lightswitch some time ago + I've seen the presentation on Techdays 2011 in Belgium. The new Visual Studio addition definitely has some promising features, and is easy to use. It could get quite handy for some (smaller) projects.

Lightswitch makes sure you'll get a working program fast with pre-configured screen templates, prewritten code and other reusable components to handle routine application tasks, along with helpful step-by-step guidance.

And afterwards you can of course customize it all in Visual Basic .NET or C#. To finalize, you can deploy to the desktop, browser, or cloud to share your application with others more easily without the cumbersome installation processes.

More info: Lightswitch, a developers tool, will launch on July 26
Videos and tutorials: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/lightswitch

VS2008: web services enumeration components not available

Recently I got following error when trying to add a Web Reference to VS2008:
The web services enumeration components are not available. You need to reinstall Visual Studio to add web references to your application.

I have no idea why this error suddenly appeared.
However, I did find a solution to this issue.

I executed 'devenv /ResetSkipPkgs' from the command line in a VS2008 command prompt.
This did the trick for me.

Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 Released

Service Pack 1 for Visual studio is now released. Preliminary support is added for HTML5, the IntelliSense also nows all html5 tags.
Other new features in this SP1 for Visual Studio 2010 can be found here

download: Download details: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 (Installer)

Announcing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1

MSDN subscribers can already download SP1 for Visual Studio 2010.
On March 10, it will be generally available.

Source: Announcing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 - Jason Zander's WebLog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

xs: int VS xs:integer... what's the difference?

When creating an xsd schema you'll have the option to define a certain type to an element.
Two of those possible types are xs:int and xs:integer. I never thought about a possible difference these types would imply. Now, their is apparently a difference in the way .NET treats both of these types.

Check this site to learn more on the subject.

Not able to add a BizTalk Project in Visual Studio 2008

It's possible that you're not able to add a biztalk project in your visual studio 2008.
The likely cause is a new visual studio 2008 installation, or it's updated in any way.

The solution to this problem is quite simple.You could just do a repair of your BizTalk with the setup, this should do the trick.

Or another way to accomplish this is by changing the registry key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Projects\{FAE04EC0-301F-11d3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}] from ‘csproj’ to ‘csproj;btproj’.
For a 64 bit version of visual studio this would be as follows:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Projects\{FAE04EC0-301F-11d3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}
Somehow this key gets reset every time the Visual Studio installation is changed...

RESOURCES:
http://ronaldlokers.blogspot.com/2010/12/visual-studio-2008-doesnt-know-biztalk.html
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/biztalkcrt/archive/2009/08/21/visual-studio-2008-fails-to-create-open-biztalk-projects.aspx