A Programmer with Microsoft tools

Programmer Sql Server Management settings

Please left click on “Tools (menu item)” in “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio”

Please left click on “Tools (menu item)” in “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio”

Please left click on “Options… (menu item)” in “&Tools”

Please left click on “Prevent saving changes that require table re-creation (check box)” in “Options”

Please left click on “Environment (outline item)” in “Options”

Please left click on “At startup: (combo box)” in “Options”

Please left click on “Open Object Explorer and new query (list item)”

Please left click on “Text Editor (outline item)” in “Options”

Please left click on “Transact-SQL (outline item)” in “Options”

Please left click on “Line numbers (check box)” in “Options”

Please left click on “Query Execution (outline item)” in “Options”

Please left click on “Query Results (outline item)” in “Options”

Please left click on “SQL Server (outline item)” in “Options”

Please left click on “SQL Server (outline item)” in “Options”

Please left click on “Results to Grid (outline item)” in “Options”

Please left click on “Include column headers when copying or saving the results (check box)” in “Options”

Please left click on “Multiserver Results (outline item)” in “Options”

Please left click on “Add server name to the results (row)” in “Options”

Please left click on “Page down (push button)” in “Options”

Please left click on “OK (push button)” in “Options”

MVC Zip Result

Sometimes you need to send to the user more than 1 file – or, maybe, the file is too large
The simplest way is : made a zip file that contains the others.

What do you need
1. SharpzipLib from http://www.icsharpcode.net/opensource/sharpziplib/ ( or download via NuGet in VS)
2. obtain the file(s) that you want as a string or as a byte[] – let’s say you have a byte[] to store in a str variable
3. make in your action something like that:

 var fcr = new ZipResult("Export.xls", str);
            fcr.AddFile("readme.txt","this zip file contains ..");
            return fcr;

4. copy the following code in your asp.net mvc projects:


using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.IO;
using ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib.Zip;
using System.Text;

namespace utilsResult
{
    public class ZipResult : FileResult
    {

        
        private Dictionary<string, byte[]> content = new Dictionary<string, byte[]>();
        public string FileNameZip;
        public ZipResult(string FileName, byte[] Contents)
            : base("application/octet-stream")
        {
            this.FileDownloadName = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(FileName) + ".zip";
            AddFile(FileName, Contents);
        }
        public void AddFile(string FileName,  byte[] Contents)
        {
            content.Add(FileName, Contents);
        }
        public void AddFile(string FileName,string Contents, Encoding e = null)
        {
            if (e == null)
                e = ASCIIEncoding.ASCII;

            content.Add(FileName, e.GetBytes(Contents));
        }

        protected override void WriteFile(HttpResponseBase response)
        {

            using (ZipOutputStream zos = new ZipOutputStream(response.OutputStream))
            {
                zos.SetLevel(3);
                zos.UseZip64=UseZip64.Off;

                foreach (var item in content)
                {
                    ZipEntry ze = new ZipEntry(item.Key);
                    ze.DateTime = DateTime.Now;                    
                    zos.PutNextEntry(ze);
                    int count=item.Value.Length;
                    zos.Write(item.Value, 0, count);
                   
                    
                }                
            }
        }
    }
}

5. future improvements:
Zip the file(s) in a dll project to made fully testable!

2011 resolution

Let’s see:

1. Learn Razor

2. Learn Azure

3. Learn WPF

4. Learn WF

It should be enough , right?

What are your resolutions?

ASP.NET MVC make users–roles fast

please left click on “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (push button)”

please create a database in “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio”


please left click on “C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe (push button)” and enter the following command : aspnet_regsql.exe -E -S .\SQLExpress -d proprii -A rm



please left click on “ListPanel (list)” in “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio”

please left click on “Tables (outline item)” in “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio”

please keyboard input in “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio” [F5]

please right click on “aspnet_Applications (list item)” in “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio”

please left click on “Select Top 1000 Rows (menu item)”

please left click in “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio”

please left click on “aspnet_Users (list item)” in “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio”

please right click on “aspnet_Users (list item)” in “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio”

please left click on “Select Top 1000 Rows (menu item)”

please left click on “RdcDAL – Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010 Express (Administrator) (push button)”

please edit web.config in your MVC application and change the connection string to point to your database


please scroll down until membership and change application name from / to /applicationName

please run your application and left click on “Log On (editable text)” in “Home Page – Windows Internet Explorer”

please left click on “User name (editable text)” in “Log On – Windows Internet Explorer”

please left click on “Register (editable text)” in “Log On – Windows Internet Explorer”

please left click on “User name (editable text)” in “Register – Windows Internet Explorer”


please input your details (I have put mine : ignatandrei)

please see that I am registered to the site

please verify to the database – left click on “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (push button)”

please left click in “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio”

please press [F5] in “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio”

please see the results – application name

please left click on “Execute (push button)” in “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio” for the query that lists users.

Programmer retrospective – 2010

What have I done in 2010 ?
1. I started this blog in English( I have one in Romanian, too)

2. I have made a book (outdated) about ASP.NET MVC 2 tips and tricks , published on Amazon .
3. I have initiated a book about programming in VS2010 – alas, it’s in Romanian at http://ronua.ro/CS/media/p/216886.aspx

4. I have learned ASP.NET MVC by answering to the questions at 1146 and I have nominated moderator on ASP.NET forums.

5. I have made a project for Azure – it is call “backup” – a project that you can deploy on Azure and have abackup for your files – like Mozy or DropBox . It is here :http://myazurebackup.codeplex.com/
(and those are other mine projects on codeplex:

AjaxForWinForms

Change Data Capture Helper

CHM2Word

Cropper.TimeCapture

IEnumerable – DataTable Exp…

It was a good year for me!

Hope it was for you too!

Happy new year 2011!

Some short links that I have for MVC:

MVC 3 RC : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=a920ccee-1397-4feb-824a-2dfefee47d54&displaylang=en

MVC 2 Source Code : http://aspnet.codeplex.com/

MVC3 Extensibility : http://bradwilson.typepad.com/blog/2010/07/service-location-pt1-introduction.html

MVC helpers : http://msprogrammer.serviciipeweb.ro/2010/05/30/mvc-helper-templates/

http://bradwilson.typepad.com/blog/2009/10/aspnet-mvc-2-templates-part-1-introduction.html

Until 10 january 2011 I would not write a post, so I’m taking the liberty to say to all happy new year!

mvc windows authentication

If you want to use Windows Authentication with MVC :

Step 1 : In web.config, put authentication mode windows

Step 2 : in IIS disable anonymous

Step 3 : go to Views\Shared\LogOnUserControl.ascx and remove logoff / logon links.

Optimizing EF4 and EDMGen2

Just reading (from Adrian Florea links ) how the EF4 could be optimized : http://www.codeproject.com/KB/database/PerfEntityFramework.aspx

First modification is to “Pre-generated Your View”. For this you must have .ssdl, .csdl, and .msl files – so you change the “Metadata Artifact Processing property to: Copy to Output Directory.”. Then you process the .ssdl, .csdl, and .msl with edmgen in order to can have the views.

Until here , all ok.

But, in the next advice, is to keep “Metadata Artifact Processing property to: Embed in Output Assembly.”

One solution is to put “Metadata Artifact Processing property to: Copy to Output Directory.” , compile, put again “Metadata Artifact Processing property to: Embed in Output Assembly.” and compile again. But , if you change the edmx (add fields or tables ) you must redo the operation – so you will have more things to do(if you remember)

A solution is to build them on the pre-build step .But how to generate the .ssdl, .csdl, and .msl files ?

Edmgen2 , http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/EdmGen2 , to the rescue. Download, put into a lib folder under your solution folder and put a pre-build like this :

$(SolutionDir)lib\edmgen2\edmgen2 /FromEdmx $(ProjectDir)prod.edmx”

“%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\EdmGen.exe” /mode:ViewGeneration /language:CSharp /nologo “/inssdl:prod.ssdl” “/incsdl:prod.csdl” “/inmsl:prod.msl” “/outviews:$(ProjectDir)prod.Views.cs”

What you must change on your project?

1. IF you are on 64 bit, change Framework to Framework64

2. change the prod with your edmx name.

What is the performance?

Tested by loading a table with 301 rows by doing the steps :

1. open connection, load all table in objects(POCO), closing connection

2. open connection , find object with PK = 1, closing connection

3. open connection , loading 1 tables with 2 related (include ) , closing connection

The results are in milliseconds:

Without pre-compiled views

LoadTable	LoadID	LoadMultiple	Total Time
579	800	172	1551
563	755	171	1489
559	754	169	1482
568	762	240	1570

With pre-compiled views:

LoadTable	LoadID	LoadMultiple	Total Time
606	807	183	1596
509	706	177	1392
852	137	192	1181
530	733	221	1484
523	722	183	1428

The average / min / max results:

	average	max	min
without	1523	1570	1482
with	1413.25	1596	1181

In the next picture the smaller the duration(milliseconds), is the better :

Conclusions:

1. For the average and min the difference is 7%, respectively 20%. Please remember we are using only 3 queries.

For the max, it is vey curious : the with is more than without. The penalty is 1%, I think that is a measuring error ? – or maybe not. However , the penalty is small comparing with others.

2. Very curious, find after ID, with a table with 301 rows, took longer than loading the whole table.However, did not take into accound finding in the list the object( it is in memory also)

3. It may worth to add the pre-build step shown before to pre-compile views.

Links :

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/database/PerfEntityFramework.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb896240.aspx

EF Profiler and investigating object context

Summary : EF Profiler worth his money !

Long Description :

I have finished a application with Entity Framework and POCO – and custom generated (.tt) files.

Now it was time to investigate performance – and it was a terrific problem.

How EF Prof helped me :

1. Displaying number of ObjectContext created and disposed in a Unit of Work and / or web page.

2. Displaying problem with the ObjectCOntext : using same context from multiple threads, alerts about code like here :

The red dot is about querying the database from the view. The gray one is about selecting a whole table without selecting top 1000 rows(OK, it was a dictionary table, like the list of countries)

3. When you want caching on your site , you can fast see this by seeing the difference between the number of queries and/or number of ObjectContext for the first time and the second one ( first time : 10, second time:2 or 0 😉 )

4. See most expensive queries as time – usually this is a good option to put an index on the “where” columns.More , you can see also non-unique queries (that you perform more than 1 time)

5. Investigate easily all queries. Know what you want to optimize and where.

Improvements :

1. Say where is the ObjectContext that is not closing.

Alternatives:

How to: View the Store Commands : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb896348.aspx

Sql Profiler : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa173918%28SQL.80%29.aspx

(free ones :

http://sites.google.com/site/sqlprofiler/

http://code.google.com/p/sqlexpressprofiler/

)

But the job will be done by yourself!

Error intercepting in MVC when saving data

I have seen many times in MVC the following code , when doing a post and saving data :

try
{
        //code to save to database
}
catch
{
         ModelState.AddRuleViolations(TheModel.GetRuleViolations());
}

Why is not good ?
I will do a simple example : if some error occurs on the database level ( such as simple unique index on a name column ) or even some error occurs whenestablishing the database connection – you will never see what’s happening. And you will have no chance to repair the problem
A slighty better code is :

try
{
     ModelState.AddRuleViolations(TheModel.GetRuleViolations());
     if(ModelState.Count == 0)// no error in the model
     {
     //code to save to database
     }
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
      ModelState.AddModelError("", ex.Message);
}

Please see also how to do logging to the exception at
http://msprogrammer.serviciipeweb.ro/2010/04/19/logging-and-instrumentation/

Andrei Ignat weekly software news(mostly .NET)