Category Archives: Tools

Cold Rooster/Storage documentation – WHere did it go?

Tools

This documentation has gone missing from MSDN. Does anyone know where it is???
(this is a post I wrote in July) I have looked in the Architecture area and on the ColdRooster site to no avail. Until WinFS comes along, I think this is a really handy article.

From October 2001 but still quite relevant, is a document on MSDN which is part of the Cold Rooster application where they worked out their decision to use SQL Server instead of the hard drive for file storage.

“Summary: Summarizes the study that was used to measure the performance difference between a database and a file system. It also explores the data modeling used to design the objects that support the ColdStorage sample Web Service hierarchical storage and infrastructure. (11 printed pages)”

It is a VERY useful “best practices” doc which I often point people to.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dncold/html/storagedbdsgn.asp

VPN and Windows Messenger

Tools

I use VPN to work on my client’s computers that are 300 miles away. Sometimes I have to connect many times during the day. Whenever I connect VPN (which means I am working), I automatically get signed into WIndows MEssenger – which gives people the signal that I am available to chat – which I am not. I have never heard of a solution to this problem. Is this supposed to be a feature? If so, I’m not a big fan.

IIS6 Virtual Server, FrontPage 2002 Extensions and frontpg.lck

Tools

Since I could not find this on the web, I am putting it here for the next person.

When trying to upgrade a virtual server in IIS6 with the FP2002 extensions, I received an error message “unable to access frontpg.lck“.

Since I was logging into the process with an admin account, I needed to add that account to the permissions of the _vti_pvt folder (even if it is just temporary) for write access.

Extending this virtual server solved the problem I was having with not being able to edit an ASP site in Visual InterDev since I moved from Win2K server to Win2003 Server.

Getting Directory names from your web applications

Tools

I had a problem today with some suddenly altered write permissions on my client’s webserver. So I needed to create a new directory that I had total ownership of to work with. That meant trying once again to remember how to use the darned MapPath, etc. It’s one of those things you use once a year or so…

I wrote a little web service utility that I can now shove into any web application (or web service application) on my webserver which returns

   System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory
   System.IO.Directory.GetDirectoryRoot(GetCurrentDirectory)
   System.IO.Directory.Directory.GetParent(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory).FullName
   Web.Services.WebService.Server.MapPath(“”)
   Web.Services.WebServiceServer.MapPath(“\”)

From the Application Directory and the BIN folder.

It returns a string that has line returns in it (though if you just run this directly in i.e. you’ll only get one long string).

I packaged these up into a zip file here if anyone wants to use it.

Note – I would not recommend LEAVING them on your webserver after you get the needed info, since they are not at all secure and expose a little more info than you might want to!!

Of course the most fun is giving something a name. I called it What’s My Dir?.

The zip has the tiny source code (an asmx file and a vb file) as well as the compiled dll if you just want to use it, plus a little readme.txt file to be sure you copy the files in the right place (for those unsure)

If you are using .NET 1.1 be sure that this is in your web.config:

<webServices>
<protocols>
<add name=”HttpGet” />
<add name=”HttpPost” />
protocols>
webServices>

inside of the tags.

I just whipped this together for myself and it does the trick, so you know … no warranties, guarantees, etc.