New Windows Phone 7 App coming soon

We have been developing a new Windows Phone 7 application called “Prepare Yourself” which will be in the marketplace very soon.   The application helps you track items that you should have in your survival kit in case of a natural disaster.   You can view the demo here

Determing SQL Server Table Size

This is a bit of code I found that determines the size used by each table in your database.

Make sure you run DBCC UPDATEUSAGE first to correct any incorrect stats (pages etc) on your tables.

DBCC UPDATEUSAGE (YOUR DATABASE NAME)

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DECLARE @TableName VARCHAR(100)    --For storing values in the cursor

--Cursor to get the name of all user tables from the sysobjects listing
DECLARE tableCursor CURSOR
FOR
select [name]
from dbo.sysobjects
where  OBJECTPROPERTY(id, N'IsUserTable') = 1
FOR READ ONLY

CREATE TABLE #TempTable
(
tableName varchar(100),
numberofRows varchar(100),
reservedSize varchar(50),
dataSize varchar(50),
indexSize varchar(50),
unusedSize varchar(50)
)

OPEN tableCursor
FETCH NEXT FROM tableCursor INTO @TableName

WHILE (@@Fetch_Status >= 0)
BEGIN
INSERT  #TempTable
EXEC sp_spaceused @TableName
FETCH NEXT FROM tableCursor INTO @TableName
END

CLOSE tableCursor
DEALLOCATE tableCursor

--Select all records so we can use the reults, ordered by biggest
SELECT *
FROM #TempTable
ORDER BY CAST(LEFT(dataSize,LEN(dataSize)-3) AS NUMERIC(18,0)) DESC

DROP TABLE #TempTable

References:

http://www.mitchelsellers.com/blogs/articletype/articleview/articleid/121/determing-sql-server-table-size.aspx

You receive a “The incoming tabular data stream (TDS) remote procedure call (RPC) protocol stream is incorrect” exception when using NVarchar parameters with Sqlclient

The problem

I got the following random error:

You receive a “The incoming tabular data stream (TDS) remote procedure call (RPC) protocol stream is incorrect” exception when using NVarchar parameters with Sqlclient

The Solution

Its a known bug with the .Net SqlClient Data Provider.   If you have a field in the database of type nvarchar(max) or greater than 4000 characters and if the user enters data into the field greater than 4000 characters via the .Net SqlClient Data Provider you will receive an exception.

To get around this, reduce the field size to less that 4000 characters or change your type to ntext or set the Sqlparamter.size property to -1 to allow the entire data to be saved.

References




http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970519

Open XML – OLE Automation Date Issues

If you are exporting a date from C# to Excel using 2007, you probably will use the following:

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Math.Round(DateTime.Now.ToOADate(), 12).ToString()

This exports the date as a OLE Automation date recognized by Excel 2007. How ever, in Excel 2010 this was causing issues, every time I exported to Excel 2010, it said that it has to repair my document and it never displayed the values correctly as dates.

Because I was using Open XML to generate the markup, Excel 2010 has been support for Open XML. I got around the problem of using:

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DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.fffffffzzz");

This exports the date as a XML Date format.
Hope this helps anyone who has the same problem!

EF Strongly Typed ObjectQuery.Include

The problem that I faced was having to put up with “hard coded” strings in the ObjectQuery.Include function to load related objects through POCO objects in the Entity Framework. This faced challenges when I renamed columns in the Model which caused a run-time error when recompiling and re-starting the application. Thanks to David Kiff, we can now change the code from being strings:

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using (CommuicationsEntities entities = new CommuicationsEntities())
{
entities.Order.Include("OrderDetails");
}

To a nice strongly typed includes using a IncludeBuilder class.

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public class IncludeBuilder
{
private readonly List _propertiesToInclude;

public IncludeBuilder()
{
_propertiesToInclude = new List();
}

public void Add(Expression<Func<T, object>> propertySelector)
{
MemberExpression memberExpression = propertySelector.Body as MemberExpression;
if (memberExpression == null)
throw new ArgumentException("Parameter propertySelector must be a MemberExpression");
_propertiesToInclude.Add(memberExpression.Member.Name);
}

public ObjectQuery Includes(ObjectQuery query)
{
foreach (string include in _propertiesToInclude)
{
query = query.Include(include);
}
return query;
}
}

the following code calls the include builder, includes the relationship and gets a simple list with no tracking on the POCO objects.

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IncludeBuilder _include = new IncludeBuilder();
_include.Add(a => a.Orders);
ObjectQuery customers= DataContext.Servers;
return _include.Includes(customers).Execute(MergeOption.NoTracking).ToList();

References:

http://davidkiff.co.uk/post/2009/08/27/EF-Strongly-Typed-ObjectQuery3cT3eInclude%28e2809ce2809d%293b.aspx

Fixing the EF Tracing and Caching Provider Wrapper Issue

If you have been using the Tracing and Caching Provider Wrappers for the ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.0, you might of come across this error message when creating POCO objects, adding them to a Data Context and commiting them to the database using the Caching Wrapper:

[NotImplementedException: The method or operation is not implemented.]
   EFCachingProvider.EFCachingDataReaderCacheWriter.GetName(Int32 ordinal) in EFCachingProvider\EFCachingDataReaderCacheWriter.cs:109
   System.Data.Mapping.Update.Internal.DynamicUpdateCommand.Execute(UpdateTranslator translator, EntityConnection connection, Dictionary`2 identifierValues, List`1 generatedValues) +8118458
   System.Data.Mapping.Update.Internal.UpdateTranslator.Update(IEntityStateManager stateManager, IEntityAdapter adapter) +267

Line 107:        public override string GetName(int ordinal)
Line 108:        {
Line 109:            throw new NotImplementedException();
Line 110:        }
Line 111:

Basically, the author’s of the code have created a wrapper for the DBDataReader class and have not implement the override methods.   This can be fixed by calling the Wrapper DataReader object methods.  This is what I have modified in the EFCachignDataReaderCacheWriter.cs file:

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using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.Common;
using EFCachingProvider.Caching;

namespace EFCachingProvider
{
///
/// Implementation of the  which reads the results of another data reader
/// and stores a copy in the cache.
///
internal class EFCachingDataReaderCacheWriter : EFCachingDataReaderBase
{
private DbQueryResults queryResults = new DbQueryResults();
private DbDataReader wrappedReader;
private int maxRows;
private Action addToCache;

///
/// Initializes a new instance of the EFCachingDataReaderCacheWriter class.
///
///
<span> </span>The wrapped reader.         ///
<span> </span>The maximum number of rows which can be cached.         ///
The delegate used to add the result to the cache when the reader finishes.         public EFCachingDataReaderCacheWriter(DbDataReader wrappedReader, int maxRows, Action addToCache)
{
this.wrappedReader = wrappedReader;
this.addToCache = addToCache;
this.maxRows = maxRows;
}

///
/// Gets a value that indicates whether this  contains one or more rows.
///
///
/// true if the  contains one or more rows; otherwise false.
///
public override bool HasRows
{
get { return this.wrappedReader.HasRows; }
}

///
/// Gets the number of rows changed, inserted, or deleted by execution of the SQL statement.
///
///
///
/// The number of rows changed, inserted, or deleted. -1 for SELECT statements; 0 if no rows were affected or the statement failed.
///
public override int RecordsAffected
{
//get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
get { return this.wrappedReader.RecordsAffected; }
}

///
/// Gets a value indicating whether the  is closed.
///
///
/// true if the  is closed; otherwise false.
///
public override bool IsClosed
{
//get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
get { return this.wrappedReader.IsClosed; }
}

///
/// Gets a value indicating the depth of nesting for the current row.
///
///
///
/// The depth of nesting for the current row.
///
public override int Depth
{
//get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
get { return this.wrappedReader.Depth; }
}

///
/// Gets name of the data type of the specified column.
///
///
The zero-based column ordinal.         ///
/// A string representing the name of the data type.
///
public override string GetDataTypeName(int ordinal)
{
//throw new NotImplementedException();
return this.wrappedReader.GetDataTypeName(ordinal);
}

///
/// Gets the data type of the specified column.
///
///
The zero-based column ordinal.         /// The data type of the specified column.
public override Type GetFieldType(int ordinal)
{
return this.wrappedReader.GetFieldType(ordinal);
}

///
/// Gets the name of the column, given the zero-based column ordinal.
///
///
The zero-based column ordinal.         /// The name of the specified column.
public override string GetName(int ordinal)
{
return this.wrappedReader.GetName(ordinal);
}

///
/// Gets the column ordinal given the name of the column.
///
///
The name of the column.         /// The zero-based column ordinal.
///
/// The name specified is not a valid column name.
///
public override int GetOrdinal(string name)
{
return this.wrappedReader.GetOrdinal(name);
}

///
/// Returns a  that describes the column metadata of the .
///
///
/// A  that describes the column metadata.
///
public override DataTable GetSchemaTable()
{
return this.wrappedReader.GetSchemaTable();
}

///
/// Advances the reader to the next result when reading the results of a batch of statements.
///
///
/// true if there are more result sets; otherwise false.
///
public override bool NextResult()
{
if (this.wrappedReader.NextResult())
{
this.queryResults = null;
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}

///
/// Closes the  object.
///
public override void Close()
{
this.wrappedReader.Close();

if (this.queryResults != null)
{
this.addToCache(this.queryResults);
}
}

///
/// Advances the reader to the next record in a result set.
///
///
/// true if there are more rows; otherwise false.
///
public override bool Read()
{
if (this.wrappedReader.Read())
{
object[] values = new object[this.wrappedReader.FieldCount];

this.wrappedReader.GetValues(values);
SetValues(values);
if (this.queryResults != null)
{
this.queryResults.Rows.Add(values);
if (this.queryResults.Rows.Count &gt; this.maxRows)
{
this.queryResults = null;
}
}

return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}
}
}

Detect when a session has ended ASP.NET

A problem that I have had in the past is trying to find out when a session has expired within ASP.NET and how to deal with the expired session.   One solution is to add the following code into the Page_Init event.   You can add this event into a class that inherits the Page class so that you can reuse on more than one page or all pages if needed.

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If Not Context.Session Is Nothing Then
If Session.IsNewSession Then
Dim szCookieHeader As String = Request.Headers("Cookie")
If Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(szCookieHeader) And szCookieHeader.IndexOf("ASP.NET_SessionId") &gt;= 0 Then
Response.Redirect("/sessiontimeoutpage.aspx")
End If
End If
End If

This code checks if a new session has been created and if the header has a ASP.NET Session id.   This makes sure that we are checking for a session that has just been created.

Random number of items from a Generic List extension method

Here is a code snippet  for returning N number of items from a generic list using a extension method.  This requires .NET 3.5.

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public static class Extensions
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// method for returning N number of random items from a generic list
        /// </summary>
        /// <typeparam name="T">Item type</typeparam>
        /// <param name="list">Generic list we wish to retrieve from</param>
        /// <param name="count">number of items to return</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public static IEnumerable<T> Randomize<T>(this List<T> list, int count)
        {
            List<T> randomList = new List<T>();
            Random random = new Random();

            while (list.Count > 0)
            {
                //get the next random number between 0 and
                //the list count
                int idx = random.Next(0, list.Count);

                //get that index
                randomList.Add(list[idx]);

                //remove that item so it cant be added again
                list.RemoveAt(idx);
            }

            //return the specified number of items
            return randomList.Take(count);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// method for returning 1 item from the generic list
        /// </summary>
        /// <typeparam name="T">Item type</typeparam>
        /// <param name="list">Generic list we wish to retrieve from</param>
        /// <param name="count">number of items to return</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public static T Randomize<T>(this List<T> list)
        {
            return Randomize(list, 1).FirstOrDefault();
        }
    }

used in code by calling the following: List<mytype> = myGenericList.Randomise(5) or mytype = myGenericList.Randomise();