Microsoft Training Kit

When ever I go for technical session with Dev community, they ask for what is the new feature in the products.  I recommend the Training Kits for that purpose, here is the list of latest kits

Training Kits

• Windows 8
• Windows Phone 8
• SQL Server 2012
• SharePoint 2013
• Windows Azure

The old versions

• Sharepoint 2010 Developer Training Kit
• SharePoint 2010 and Windows Phone 7 Training Kit
• SharePoint and Windows Azure Development Kit
• Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit (December 2011)
• SQL Server 2012 Developer Training Kit
• SQL Server 2008 R2 Update for Developers Training Kit (May 2011 Update)
• SharePoint and Silverlight Training Kit
• Windows Phone 7 Training Kit for Developers - RTM Refresh
• Windows Phone 7.5 Training Kit
• Silverlight 4 Training
• Web Camps Training Kit
• Identity Developer Training Kit
• Internet Explorer 10 Training Kit
• Visual Studio LightSwitch Training Kit
• Office 2010 Developer Training Kit - June 2011
• Office 365 Developer Training Kit - June 2011 Update
• Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Training Kit
• PHP on Windows and SQL Server Training Kit (March 2011 Update)
• Windows Server AppFabric Training Kit
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Developer Training Kit - July 2009

Windows Restart

I was trying to install SharePoint 2013, the setup was complaining about a pending system restart.  Even after multiple restart / Shutdown.  The error message is same, it is confirmed that I need some tweak in Windows to make it working.

Here is the solution which worked for me

1. Open Register Editor using Run "regedit" .
2. Find the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager"
3. Rename the "PendingFileRenameOperations" value to "PendingFileRenameOperations2"

The magic worked, the setup program is no more complaining about pending windows restart.

Happy coding.

XBox Live connection

I am excited to connect XBox to internet and want to stream video directly in TV.  But configuring XBox to connect XBox Live had some hiccup. 

To connect XBox live, XBox required update and for update it needs to connect XBox live, the cyclic dependency made it stuck.

Update Failed

Can't download the update.  To test your connection, open System Settings and select Network Settings, Test Xbox LIVE Connection.

If the problem persists, go to
www.xbox.com/support.

Status Code:335A-0000-0000-0300-8007-2751

The error message description pointed me to change the MTU settings minimum to 1364.  This URL helped to get the MTU setting.

ping www.expedient.net -f -l 1492

My router MTU setting was higher than the minimum required.  So there is no clue, Connected XBox support chat, waited for 30 minutes.  No response, I was keep searching solution on the web for the problem, In the XBox update site it is mentioned that we can do update using USB, DVD.  Wow… that looked like good plan.  Yes, it was I downloaded the XBox updated to USB drive and loaded to XBox device.  boooom it updated and connected to XBox Live.

Thrilled to see XBox live videos, to my surprise all the video had some price tag!! 

SharePoint Error Story

There was one JavaScript error which is killing every ones time.

Some time when we access a SSRS Drill thru in some scenario we go the following error.

When we debug in IE it given long list of complaints.

SCRIPT5022: Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerServerErrorException: An unexpected error has occurred. ScriptResource.axd, line 5 character 16485 HTML1202: http://server/sites/site/ is running in Compatibility View because 'Display intranet sites in Compatibility View' is checked. SEC7115: :visited and :link styles can only differ by color. Some styles were not applied to :visited. HTML1202: http://Set/sites/projec/Pages/RepName.aspx is running in Compatibility View because 'Display intranet sites in Compatibility View' is checked. HTML1512: Unmatched end tag. RepName.aspx, line 1095 character 105 SEC7115: :visited and :link styles can only differ by color. Some styles were not applied to :visited. ReportName.aspx SCRIPT5022: Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerServerErrorException: An unexpected error has occurred. ScriptResource.axd, line 5 character 16485 SCRIPT5022: Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerServerErrorException: An unexpected error has occurred. ScriptResource.axd, line 5 character 16485 SCRIPT5022: Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerServerErrorException: An unexpected error has occurred. ScriptResource.axd, line 5 character 16485

As it is a JavaScript error, every one started looking into client configurations and then Web.Config.

We found many solutions they all worked in first go, as the error was intermittent after every setting change we believed the issue is fixed.  But the truth is the Error smiled to us once in a while!!

• Turn off HTTP 1.1 in browser
• Turn off Async Rendering in Report Viewer Web part
• Recreate the page
• aspnet:MaxHttpCollectionKeys
• scriptResourceHandler enableCompression="false" enableCaching="true"

then what!!

Start from the beginning.  We started analyzing the all the logs, SharePoint, SSRS, IIS.  Try reproducing the error and get point in time error log.  The point in time error study helped.

We got the following error message in SharePoint log

Message

Unexpected error occurred in method 'GetObject' , usage 'SPViewStateCache' - Exception 'Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.DataCacheException: ErrorCode<ERRCA0018>:SubStatus<ES0001>:The request timed out.. Additional Information : The client was trying to communicate with the server : net.tcp:/DEVSRV2.com:22233     at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.DataCache.ThrowException(ResponseBody respBody, RequestBody reqBody)     at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.DataCache.InternalGet(String key, DataCacheItemVersion& version, String region, IMonitoringListener listener)     at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.DataCache.<>c__DisplayClass49.<Get>b__48()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.DistributedCaching.SPDistributedCache.GetObject(String key)'.

Unable to write SPDistributedCache call usage entry.

ViewStateLog: Failed to read from the velocity cache: http://ServerName/sites/ProjName/Pages/ReportName.aspx

So the culprit is Distributed Cache

• Distributed Cache is the new service in SharePoint 2013
• For View State, DistributedViewStateCache is used.
• As the View State is not available while loading the page, we are getting the Java Script Error.

Lessons

• Understand the problem first before jumping to solutions, try to get some pattern.  All Bing answers are not for you!!
• Get as many logs as possible. especially the point in time log.  Get the log backup.
• Widen the scope and thing broader for the intermittent issues.

Happy coding & debugging!!

SSAS

Great collection of useful SSAS articles.  It helped me.  It will help all.

http://ssas-wiki.com

Insert Object in Office 2013

Office 2013 become much more smart and packed with lot of features, at the same time switching between the version always has some learning curve.  Recently we spend few minute in searching the insert object option in 2013.

In Office 2010

T-SQL Concatenate all row values

Many time you may need to get list of values from a database table and form a concatenated string (Comma separated).  I see still some programmer use cursor to do that.  we have simple technique to achieve this.

DECLARE @T VARCHAR(MAX)
SET @T = ''

SELECT @T = @T + COLUMN_NAME + ', '
  FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
  WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'Metadata' AND TABLE_SCHEMA = 'DBO'
 
SELECT @T

The @T variable will hold all row values separated by comma.