Getting .dll files out of the GAC

Periodically, you may find it necessary to get a copy of a .dll file out of the the GAC (C:\Windows\Assembly).  Navigating to this folder, you will notice it doesn’t “feel” like a normal windows folder since it isn’t.  You can drag .dll files onto this folder to install, but you can’t drag anything out of it.  This happens due to the shfusion.dll explorer extension dll that format the GAC folder.

Before:

So if you want access to these .dlls, you can unregister the shfusion.dll

regsvr32 /u C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\shfusion.dll

and you should see a message like this:

After:

Once you have unregistered the .dll, you can browse to the assembly folder and you will notice that the underlying folder structure is exposed:

If you’re looking to grad several .dlls out of the GAC, you can use xcopy or some other tool to flatten out the folder structure.

string.format("{0} Architect{1}", "Over", "ed")

As an enterprise software architect, there are many difficult problems that I face at work.  Most of the time, these problems require an elegantly architected solution that promises to be both maintainable and efficient at the same time.  This is always a difficult balance to achieve. 

The thing that surprises me most is that many people have a skewed view of maintainability.  An application that is maintainable does not necessarily mean that it is simple to configure, refactor, or extend.  While these characteristics of software are good ones, they do not make software easy to maintain.  Ease of maintenance to me means that a developer with good fundamental skills can understand, support, and modify code.  Often times, the simplest software is the easiest to maintain.

Which brings me to my key point: Many software systems are overarchitected

While that word came up as a spelling error in my editor, I am quite confident that the concept exists.  You know the stuff I am talking about — Code that is ridiculously complex in the name of architectural purity.  Code that has hooks for uses that only the designer/developer were able to dream up and that the user or support tech will never understand or use.  If these extraneous bells and whistles cause you to expend brain cycles on goals other than making the software meet the requirements, the exercise is purely academic.

This is why is pays to have experience in the problem domain for which you are writing software.  If you understand what things the user may want to do, you can add the right hooks in (and none of the wrong ones).  Take the title of this blog post as an example.  I have plenty of flexibility as I have a plethora of options for switching out my title.  Heck, I could even put it in web.config!  But alas, does that really buy my anything to be able to easily switch my blog post tile to “Under Architecting”?

So before you amaze yourself with your coding prowess, think about what it is you are doing.  Is it a requirement for you application?  Would it be used any more often than once per ice age?  Did you only do it to prove that you could?

A little common sense goes a long way…

WMIC Wildcard Search using like and %

This is a quick post to provide some detail on using the wildcard search for WMIC.  This feature of the command structure will allow you to use like conditions in a where clause to look for objects that match a specific pattern.  For those of you comfortable with the SQL syntax for the same task, this will be quite familiar.

Background – Regular WHERE clause

First, let’s look at using WMIC without wildcards for comparison.  All of the statements below are run while at the WMIC command prompt.  To get to the WMIC command prompt, simply go to a Windows command window and type WMIC.

Command to show you all of your services

• service

Command to show you all of your services that are running

• service where state=”Running”

Command to show you specific data about your services that are running

• service where state=”Running” get Name, DisplayName, PathName, ProcessID

Filtering it Down – the LIKE Operator

So you’ll notice that the list of services you have running is a bit difficult to sift through as there are a lot of them.  You can always export this list to a text file by calling WMIC with that command line and piping to a text file, but when you are looking for a specific set of data, I like elaborating on the where clause.  The key thing to keep in mind here is that you need to enclose the full where clause in double quotes to keep it as a single string.  As you’ll notice above, it is possible to use state=”Running” by just not using any spaces in the clause, however that doesn’t work with like.

For example, this will not work

• service where PathNamelike”%SQL%” get Name, DisplayName, PathName, ProcessID

But this will

• service where “PathName like ‘%SQL%’” get Name, DisplayName, PathName, ProcessID

The body of the where clause needs to be wrapped in quotes to make it a contiguous statement that does not get confused as multiple arguments.  There are a couple of interesting conveniences that should be noted about WMIC in general

1. Using single or double quotes seems to be largely interchangeable
2. Keywords and commands are not case sensitive

So the trick is that you need to use a slightly different and more complex syntax in order to use the like and % functionality.  Taking this command syntax full circle, you can use the more complex syntax all of the time to avoid confusion

• service where “state = ‘Running’”

Using this wildcard filtering functionality is one of the most powerful uses of WMIC that applies to your everyday tasks.  You can combine this with the other powerful WMI functionality such as killing processes, starting or stopping services, etc.  So if you wanted to stop all of the services on your server that are running a particular application (we’ll say Widget.exe), you could do something like this:

• service where “PathName like ‘%Widget.exe%’” call StopService

WMIC continues to be very useful in my work, so I hope you find this post helpful in your activities!

VSS Labeling Problem – File $/path/ is already open

Recently, while using the source control system that everyone hates (but seems to continue to use), I was trying to apply a label and got the following error:

The path name blurred to protect intellectual property, but this was a path in VSS, not a file.  When trying to apply a label to the folder I got this message.  I noticed that it seemed to happen on certain folders, but not others.  For the folders it did occur on, it would say down in the status bar for about a minute before coming back with this error. 

This may or not help you, but I will share the steps I used to resolve this error.

1. The first important step to resolving this issue was narrowing it down to the specific folder where this problem was occurring.  In my case, this was simply trial and error of applying labels at each folder until I honed in on the culprit.
2. Next, check out all of the files in that folder.  In my case, there were about 2 dozen files.  When checking them all out, I got a message in the status bar that was suspicious:

Could not checkout local version of $/<path>/<filename>, checking out latest version instead.

So at this point, I tried checking the file out and back in with no change in the behavior.  My problem still persisted and I was not able to label that file or any parent folder of that file.  Arrrrgghh!

So while I have narrowed it down, no solution yet.  Please contribute any comments or resources you have that may help here.  I’ll continue to investigate and will likely be running SS ANALYZE next…

Saving Changes is Not Permitted?

In order to test drive the data modeling features of SS2008, I decided to use the engine for a real-world application.  I’m now attempting to use SQL Server to manage the Bateman household.  My first table in the design is a simple list of chores that we need to make sure get done around the house.

As I was putting together some of the details about how I would use this data, I decided to add a new column in order to specify the frequency (in days) which each chore should ideally be performed.  I was quite surprised to get the following error message when tying to add a nullable column to my existing table.

Saving changes is not permitted.  The changes you have made require the following tables to be dropped and re-created.  You have either made changes to a table that can’t be re-created or enabled the option Prevent saving changes that require the table to be re-created. 

Are you kidding me?  It wouldn’t let me add an “Allow Nulls” column?  That just seemed absurd so I did a bit more digging.

Apparently, this is now the default behavior for any of the following changes to a table:

• Adding a new column to the middle of the table
• Dropping a column
• Changing column nullability
• Changing the order of the columns
• Changing the data type of a column

In order to prevent this default behavior, you simply need to uncheck a box in the table designer options using the Tools -> Options menu item

Expand the Designers section to display the Table and Database Designers options.

To change this behavior, just uncheck the “Prevent saving changes that require table re-creation” checkbox.

Although this is a bit frustrating, at least it is easy to fix and there is plenty of advice out there.  Here are some other people that found and posted this useful tidbit before me:

http://mirceacimpoi.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!98EC8584C8BBED54!849.trak

http://mtgcsharpguy.blogspot.com/2008/06/ms-sql-server-2008-new-features_13.html

http://www.danrigsby.com/blog/index.php/2008/09/26/sql-server-2008-error-saving-changes-is-not-permitted/

http://pragmaticworks.com/community/blogs/brianknight/archive/2008/06/04/sql-server-2008-designer-behavior-change-saving-changes-not-permitted.aspx

http://geekswithblogs.net/frankw/archive/2008/05/29/saving-table-changes-is-safer-in-sql-server-2008.aspx

Cool New Features in SSMS – Recent Expensive Queries

Depending on whether you are more of a developer or more of a DBA you may care more or less about this next feature.  However, anyone can benefit from it.  SSMS 2008 makes it very easy to crack open the Activity Monitor as there is a noticeable button right on the toolbar.

Once inside you get a few charts, as well as some tables of performance related data below.  This is clearly not as exciting on my local Vista machine as it would be on a pounded production database, but you can see where the power of a tool like this could come in handy.

Each of the charts represents these metrics:

• % Processor Time
• Waiting Tasks
• Database I/O
• Batch Requests/Sec

Probably the most interesting feature to me is the Recent Expensive Queries table.  This allows you to dynamically analyze the most impacting queries against your server.  Since the impact can be determined by a number of factors, it allows you to sort by:

• Executions
• CPU
• Physical Reads
• Logical Writes
• Logical Reads
• Average Duration
• Plan Count

Even cooler, you can drill into the actual query itself with a right-click option:

Cool New Features in SSMS – Select Top 100 Rows

As I have been playing with the newest version of Microsoft’s SQL Server Managements Studio (SSMS), I wanted to share a few of the cool new features.  It seemed that the jump from Query Analyzer in SQL Server 2000 to SSMS in 2005 was not necessarily a smooth one and many people complained about SSMS.  This new version, however, appears to build on the solid framework of 2005 and add lots of cool features that will make our lives much easier.

Select Top 1000 Rows

Just grabbing a sample of data out of a table has been made much easier in 2008:

It is also good to see that this has been made configurable in the Tools->Options menu item:

You’ll notice that there is also an “Edit Top n Rows” option.  This is arguably less useful as I haven’t found anywhere to specify which 200 rows, but still a noble effort.  I don’t often find myself thinking, “Hmmmm, I think I would like to edit some random data.  Let me just pull up any old record and start changing the data.”  However, once in edit mode, you can always use the “SQL” button (in green box below) to change your query:

Missing Web Site Templates in Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition

Continuing in my quest to experience the goodness of the new .NET 3.5 SP1 stuff from the ground up, I installed Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition.  After all, now that I have my AdventureWorks database up and running, I want to experiment with ASP.NET data scaffolding (ASP.NET Dynamic Data), JavaScript Intellisense, ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services, and many of the other great new features in this release.  As Scott Hanselman and Carl Franklin recently discussed on Hanselminutes, this framework update really should have been .NET 3.6 there is so much new stuff in there!

 

The Problem

So I was sorely disappointed to start my first web site and was prompted with this confusing dialog box after doing a File -> New -> Web Site:

Selecting a different version of the framework didn’t fix anything, I had no web site templates!  How was I going to follow all of these simple step-by-step tutorials if I couldn’t get past step 1?  From the scores of other people having the same issue, I could tell I was not alone in my frustration.

Allow me to back up a bit and describe how I got into this predicament — it didn’t take long…

 

After installing, I did the natural thing and clicked on the item in my start menu labeled “Microsoft Visual Studio 2008″ as it seemed to be the only logical choice.  Verifying the properties shows that this shortcut is pointing to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\Devenv.exe, which is exactly what I would have expected from experience with other versions of Visual Studio (insert snide remark about seemingly old version number in the “Common7″ part of the path).

 

The Solution

No telling if this will be the same problem that everyone else seemed to be having, but it appears I just opened the wrong .exe!?!  I can’t really blame myself though, since the installation process seems to be a bit misleading.  There is no shortcut anywhere to the correct application which is actually called VWDExpress.exe:

Launching this executable manually gives me the much anticipated web site templates, and what I need to move on .  One subtle note is that my menu path to get to this is actually File -> New Web Site.  This path is one level shallower than the full blown studio version, but they both share the same keyboard shortcut of Shift + Alt + N

So, if you read the whole post above and you’re still not quite sure what I am getting at, just look at the log in your development environment:

No web site templates (bad):

Web site templates (good):

The Details

To clarify whether or not this should apply to you, I am running all free versions of the tools provided my Microsoft.  If you have a full-blown version of Visual Studio, you may not experience this problem when using the standard IDE.  I first installed SQL Server 2008 Express, then Visual Web Developer 2008 Express.

This means that I now have the following versions of these files:

devenv.exe	9.0.30729.1
VWDExpress.exe	9.0.30729.1

 

Stay tuned for more blog posts as I continue on this journey…

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SQL Server 2008 Sample Databases

If you remember good ol’ NorthWind, you’ll know that having a sample SQL Server database can be great for sampling new technologies and performing RDBMS experiments and tests.  As much as detail-oriented presenters and trainers like to use NorthWind, it is an old sample from SQL Server 2000 that doesn’t have many of the new features in SQL Server 2008.

I set out to get the sample databases, and I was amazed at the complexity of it.  Not that it is in general a difficult task, but it could probably be made much more simple by Microsoft.  Since I figured out which hoops you need to jump through,  I thought I would summarize it for you here:

1) Read Up

If you want to have a successful installation of the sample databases, take 20-30 minutes to become familiar with the SQL Server Database Product Samples.  Contrary to some of the complaints people have posted in the comments, there is lots of good documentation that helps you understand the contents and process.

Two important points you might miss are that you need to have full-text search installed and FILESTREAM enabled to ensure a problem free install of the samples.  This can be done after the fact if you did not specify these settings during the initial installation.

It should also be noted that attempting to change the FILESTREAM setting through the SQL Server Configuration Manager did not seem to work even after a restart of the engine.  Instead I had to run this SQL

exec sp_configure ‘filestream_access_level’, ‘2′ RECONFIGURE

 

2) Download & Run the Installer

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the process and read the pre-requisites, download the .msi installer file:

http://www.codeplex.com/MSFTDBProdSamples/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=16040

For my Vista machine running SQL Server 2008, I picked this file: SQL2008.AdventureWorks_OLTP_DB_v2008.x86.msi

 

One interesting point is that there appears to be an option to have the installer restore the database for you.  Unfortunately, when I attempted to use this option to restore it in my local SQLExpress instance, it bombed out on me requiring me to run the installer again without the option selected.  The option is not selected by default which leads me to believe that Microsoft is aware this is a potential problem area.

3) Restore the DB Manually

This is the part where people with little or no DBA knowledge probably begin to curse.  If you are running the same platform as me and accept all of the defaults, you would think this should be as simple as running this script in a new query window (based on step 6 in the instructions):

RESTORE DATABASE AdventureWorks2008 FROM DISK ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Samples\AdventureWorks2008.bak’

Unfortunately, this gave me a bunch of errors based on the way the RESTORE was attempting to use the default settings.

You can get around this by using the restore script (RestoreAdventureWorks2008.sql) in the same folder as the .bak file.  If you look at how the path is being used, you’ll notice that you have to substitute the path as follows in the top section of the script:

SET @source_path = ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\’ 

 

Summary

So after a bit of plugging away, I was able to the the sample successfully restored.  Yea!

I truly empathize with Microsoft as streamlining this installation can be a daunting task.  There are an endless number of settings that have to be accounted for, security, versions, etc.  However, this installation process is much too difficult for the average developer in my view.

Now that I have some data to play around with, I expect to post some experiences about using the new 2008 features such as intellisense and the other goodies I expect to find in the newest version of this tool.  All things considered, SQL Server is still my database platform of preference and I appreciate everything Microsoft does to make this free version available to the public.

What’s that picture?

In case you were wondering what the picture is in the current banner on this blog, that’s me on a hike in a semi-remote region of Western India (Maharashtra).  Outside of Mumbai, there is a hilltop community named Matheran that has many hiking trails with stunning views of the surrounding area.  Where I am standing it is a several hundred foot drop straight down to a rocky slope below (notice the lack of guard-rails)…