One such error is that only happens when working with [...]]]> During the process of setting up DTC you usually find yourself working with DTCPING. While invaluable in the configuration process, using it can be a time consuming process. When you run through the tool it progressively provides you with a problems that need fixing.

One such error is that only happens when working with Windows Client Operating Systems is

Invoking RPC method on YOUR-MACHINE-NAME Problem:fail to invoke remote RPC method Error(0x5) at dtcping.cpp @303 -->;RPC pinging exception -->5(Access is denied.)

RPC is turned off for Remote Clients by default in Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista and Windows 7 as a security measure.

The fix for this is to add a key into the registry.

More details on the change to RPC and the need for RestrictRemoteClients Registry settings.

Below is a bit of PowerShell code that will add/fix the setting in the registry as per the documentation.

$rpcPath = 'HKLM:Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\RPC'

$remoteKey = 'RestrictRemoteClients'

$rpc = Test-Path $rpcPath

md $rpcPath -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Remove-ItemProperty $rpcPath $remoteKey -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

New-ItemProperty $rpcPath -name $remoteKey -value "0" -propertyType dword

Our goals at this stage are

Thanks to So you want to add a Normal Class Library Project to a Silverlight application, you think to your self how hard could this be despite the Visual Studio Warnings. Well for the most part its fairly simple, however there are a number of problems that I faced when doing exactly that.

Thanks to Neil Mosafi’s post on converting class library project for Silverlight consumption, I found 2 methods of doing the conversion.

1.) Create a NEW Silverlight  Class Library Project and then ADD your EXISTING code files to the project

2.) Hack the csproj file to change its signature (details are courtesy of Neil Mosafi’s post) VS.NET 2008 believes that its a Silverlight Project (don’t forget the changes needs to be made to both the DEBUG as well as RELEASE sections)

Initially I went about making these changes using method 2 however I kept finding a number of issues relating to duplicate references , especially with the HttpWebRequest object and a few other things.

I also needed to change all non generic collections to use their generic equivalents as all non generic collections are not included  in Silverlight 2.0

The Serializable attribute is not part of the coreclr, therefore it has to go, XML Serialization is your friend. Rockford Lhotka has started work on an alternative to the Serializable attribute however its extremely limited at this stage, The Silverlight Serializer may suit your needs so do check it out.

The project I was playing with also used a little bit of XPath Navigation and some other System.XML namespace classes that are not part of the cut down version, so I have to change the code to use Linq to XML

There were a whole bunch of other things that I fixed up and was good to go when I realized that the project changes were not referencing the correct mscorlib and system.xml libraries, however the compiler did not seem to mind to much which baffled me. At this point I decided that the safer way was to go down option 1, simply because I thought it would give a much better jumping off point, lo and behold it has. I am pretty close to having it compile correctly for the Silverlight application which I intend to share.

At the end of this all my advice in converting is to go with method 1, as its just much more fool proof.

This is great news for the Entity Framework team. This added support for multiple database vendors is another big plus for choosing the Entity Framework over Linq To Sql.

Most samples I have seen demonstrate [...]]]> Service Broker has a really good C# wrapper interface that comes part of the samples on Codeplex. If you need to work with service broker objects in the managed world then I would recommend using the interface from the Codeplex Service Broker Samples.

Most samples I have seen demonstrate communicating within a single database, and hence use the SqlTransaction Class The code below is an example of sending a message to a SSB Service  in a SqlTransaction.

   1: private void SendMsgToSSB()

   2: {

   3:     SqlConnection conn = null;

   4:     SqlTransaction tran = null;

   5:     Conversation dialog = null;

   6:     Service client = null;

   7:     string connString = "Persist Security Info = False; Integrated Security = True; Initial Catalog = MyServiceBrokerDB; Data Source = .; Connect Timeout = 30;"

   8:     try

   9:     {

  10:         conn = new SqlConnection(connString);

  11:         conn.Open();

  12:  

  13:         // Begin a transaction

  14:         tran = conn.BeginTransaction();

  15:  

  16:         // Create a service object

  17:         client = new Service("MyCoolService", conn, tran);

  18:         client.FetchSize = 1;

  19:  

  20:         // Begin a dialog with the MyCoolService

  21:         dialog = client.BeginDialog(

  22:             "MyCoolServiceTarget", null, "DEFAULT",

  23:             TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1), false, conn, tran);

  24:  

  25:         // Create request message

  26:         string outgoingBody = "my really cool msg that broker understands";

  27:         Message request = new Message("DEFAULT",

  28:                                       new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(outgoingBody)));

  29:  

  30:         // Send the message to the service

  31:         dialog.Send(request, conn, tran);

  32:  

  33:         dialog.End(conn, tran);

  34:         tran.Commit(); 

  35:     }

  36:     catch (ServiceException svcEx)

  37:     {//deal with this pesky service exceptions

  38:     }

  39:     finally

  40:     {//clean up here close connections etc.

  41:     }

  42: }

But in scenarios where the transaction needs to be elevated from a lightweight transaction to one that needs the aid of the DTC the SqlTransaction object is not going to cut it for you.

With a simple change (in bold and italicized) you can then support enlisting in a Distributed Transaction.

   1: public void SendMsgToSSB()

   2: {

   3:     SqlConnection conn = null;

   4:     Conversation dialog = null;

   5:     Service client = null;

   6:     string ConnectionString = "Persist Security Info = False; Integrated Security = True; Initial Catalog = MyServiceBrokerDB; Data Source = .; Connect Timeout = 30;";

   7:     try

   8:     {

   9:         conn = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString);

  10:         if (conn.State != ConnectionState.Open)

  11:         {

  12:             conn.Open();

  13:         }

  14:         conn.EnlistTransaction(Transaction.Current);

  15:  

  16:         // Create a service object

  17:         client = new Service("MyCoolService", conn, null);

  18:         client.FetchSize = 1;

  19:  

  20:         // Begin a dialog with the MyCoolService

  21:         dialog = client.BeginDialog(

  22:             "MyCoolServiceTarget", null, "DEFAULT",

  23:             TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1), false, conn, null);

  24:  

  25:         // Create request message

  26:         string outgoingBody = "my really cool msg that broker understands";

  27:         Message request = new Message("DEFAULT",

  28:                                       new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(outgoingBody)));

  29:  

  30:         dialog.Send(request, conn, null);

  31:         dialog.End(conn, null);

  32:     }

  33:     catch (ServiceException ex)

  34:     { //deal with the exception

  35:     }

  36:     finally

  37:     { //clean up

  38:     }

  39: }

Again this code has a small issue what about if there is no Transaction available then sending a message without a transaction could be a bad thing. With one more change its ready to support both scenarios.

   1: public void SendMsgToSSB()

   2:   {   SqlTransaction tran = null;

   3:       SqlConnection conn = null;

   4:       Conversation dialog = null;

   5:       Service client = null;

   6:       string ConnectionString = "Persist Security Info = False; Integrated Security = True; Initial Catalog = MyServiceBrokerDB; Data Source = .; Connect Timeout = 30;";

   7:       try

   8:       {

   9:           conn = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString);

  10:           if (conn.State != ConnectionState.Open)

  11:           {

  12:               conn.Open();

  13:           }

  14:           if (Transaction.Current != null)

  15:           {

  16:               conn.EnlistTransaction(Transaction.Current);

  17:           }

  18:           else

  19:           {

  20:               tran = conn.BeginTransaction();

  21:           }

  22:  

  23:           // Create a service object

  24:           client = new Service("MyCoolService", conn, null);

  25:           client.FetchSize = 1;

  26:  

  27:           // Begin a dialog with the MyCoolService

  28:           dialog = client.BeginDialog(

  29:               "MyCoolServiceTarget", null, "DEFAULT",

  30:               TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1), false, conn, null);

  31:  

  32:           // Create request message

  33:           string outgoingBody = "my really cool msg that broker understands";

  34:           Message request = new Message("DEFAULT",

  35:                                         new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(outgoingBody)));

  36:  

  37:           dialog.Send(request, conn, null);

  38:           dialog.End(conn, null);

  39:           if (tran != null)

  40:           {

  41:               tran.Commit();

  42:           }

  43:       }

  44:       catch (ServiceException ex)

  45:       { //deal with the exception

  46:       }

  47:       finally

  48:       { //clean up 

  49:       }

  50:   }

I have also been making a few changes to the interface that I intend to publish shortly.

My only change to their scripts would be to use NVARCHAR(MAX) or VARCHAR(MAX) [...]]]> First up Proper Case is really Title Case.  And if you ever need to convert text to Title Case in SQL you can use Vyas Kondreddi’s PROPERCASE SQL script or David Wiesman’s PROPERCASE SQL script

My only change to their scripts would be to use NVARCHAR(MAX) or VARCHAR(MAX) as compared to their use of VARCHAR(8000), if your using SQL Server 2005 or above.

   1: CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[fProperCase]

   2: (

   3:     @Value VARCHAR(8000), 

   4:     @Exceptions VARCHAR(8000),

   5:     @UCASEWordLength TINYINT

   6: ) 

   7: RETURNS VARCHAR(8000) 

   8: AS

   9: BEGIN

  10: ...

  11: END

So I would covert the above syntax when using SQL Server 2000 to the T-SQL below when using SQL Server 2005

   1: CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[fProperCase]

   2: (

   3:     @Value VARCHAR(MAX), 

   4:     @Exceptions VARCHAR(MAX),

   5:     @UCASEWordLength TINYINT

   6: ) 

   7: RETURNS VARCHAR(MAX) 

   8: AS

   9: BEGIN

  10: ...

  11: END

Enter the –g startup switch, You can read more about the SQL Server 2005 startup options to get the fine detail. In order to make the [...]]]> For most people using SQL Server CLR is not an issue however when you have more that 4GB or more of memory, the CLR does not just work.

Enter the –g startup switch, You can read more about the SQL Server 2005 startup options to get the fine detail. In order to make the required changes follow these steps

1.) Launch SQL Server Configuration Manger

2.) Under Sql Server 2005 Services choose the instance of SQL Server that you are targeting for the change and right click on it and select Properties.

3.) Move to the Advanced Tab and locate the Startup Parameters

4.) Add the –g option to the end by first closing the previous parameter with a ‘;’ then –g, not adding the ‘;’ to the end of the previous parameter will cause SQL server to fail on restart

5.) Click Apply /OK and restart the service. When the service restarts you should now have SQL CLR on your machine. A simple Hello World CLR stored proc should do tell you if your in business or not.

STEP 1: Download and Install Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) 6.0 

STEP 2: Download and Install Microsoft SQL Server Native Client 

STEP [...]]]> How do you deploy SQL Server Management Objects (SMO) runtime?   Follow this 3 step process for success.

STEP 1: Download and Install Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) 6.0 

STEP 2: Download and Install Microsoft SQL Server Native Client 

STEP 3: Download and Install Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Management Objects Collection

The links above point to the X86 framework however at the time of writing the Feature Pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 – February 2007 was the latest and had links to the various processor architectures that are supported by Microsoft

I guess the next logical step is to find out what the differences will be between SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 seeing as its release is imminent. That being said my total time invested in Microsoft’s latest database technology has been zero.

While I am deviating. Am I the only one not really concerned with SQL Server 2008’s launch?