Commerce Server/IIS: File or assembly name Microsoft.CatalogServer, or one of its dependencies, was not found.
This typically means that you need to configure your site to use v2.0 of the .NET framework. aspnet_regiis -i is one way, another is to manually switch to 2.0 in the ASP.NET tab of the sites IIS prope
Commerce Server: Failed to get the connection string of the product catalog resource for the specified site.
If you get this exception when loading a CSAdmin web service it is likely that the AppPool’s identity does not have access to the MSCS_Admin database. Give the identity access to the databases and you
Slow Jerky Cursor on Virtual Machine?
If you have a slow jerky cursor (mouse) on a Virtual Machine it probably means that you need to install Virtual Machine Additions. How to install Virtual Machine Additions on a virtual machine http://
JavaScript Lint
My team uses many static analysis tools to check for common coding mistakes and coding standards. I recently stubbled upon JavaScriptLint which we’ll start using to analize our JavaScript code base, w
What is your dream dev portal?
What features would your dream dev portal have? Blogs, technologies, products, reviews, articles? Does the customizable experience at Live.com give you what you need or would you use a site that pushe
What's your homepage?
I’m a dev lead in a group that is part of MSDN and TechNet. I’m curious what you (the IT Pro/Dev community) think of the MSDN/TechNet homepages and how we could make them better. It’d be cool if you c
ASP.NET Videos
Lots of great ASP.NET videos up on www.ASP.net http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/default.aspx?tabid=63
Learning Platform v3 is live!
The project I’ve been working on since I joined IDEO last October has finally shipped! Learning Platform v3 can be found at http://learning.microsoft.com/ The Learning Platform allows you to Purchas
Blinq - Database editor webapp autogeneration
Blinq is going to at least make all the dreary admin site creation work super easy for you. I was up and running with a full admin site in about 5 mins.
Solution to the ambiguous "Configuration Error" - An error occurred loading a configuration file: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
If you see this error message it means that you have not selected a .NET framework version to use for the website or virtual directory. To resolve, go to IIS, properties of the site, ASP.NET tab and s
Cons of Response.Redirect(url, false)
The second parameter overload of Response.Redirect is nice because it doesn’t call Response.End, which is responsible for throwing the ThreadAbortException. BUT… The drawback to using this is that the
VSTS Performance Tools
Check out Ian Huff’s intro video about VSTS Performance Tools. It’s a great overview and covers just about everything you need to know about them.
Convert.ChangeType for Nullable types
Convert.ChangeType doesn’t support nullable types. Peter Johnson has a post which shows how to test and cast from object to Nullable types. The can obviously be extended with generics. http://aspallia
Type conversion (From object to Nullable, Enum, Custom TypeConverter)
While building our Commerce Server 2007 solution it made sense to wrap the LineItem class to easily access the weakly typed indexer accessible properties (which are exposed as object). Because the und
How to properly unregister a Commerce Server pipeline component
My team is implementing a custom Commerce Server 2007 (which just RTM’d last week btw) and I had to remove a custom pipeline from the stack. I removed all references from the registry, but forgot to
Amazon's Mechanical Turk
Let’s say an algorithm does what we need it to do really well 90% of the time. We have a choice to build the app to handle the other 10% which could come at substantial cost, or introduce a human work
Mix Day 2 - Office, Media Center, Gadgets, Atlas
Very cool talk with Joe Belfiore this morning. I came a little late, but caught the cool work ms is doing with ease of integration with Office Addins. VSTO makes this especially easy. He demo’d a cool
Mix Day 1 Part 2
**Overview of Expression - Brad Becker **Splitview and XamlPad are included in the WinFx SDK. You can use them to create the Xaml by hand, but I would stay away if you can and go with Expression! It
Mix Day 1 - Part 1
My day started off by having a quick bite with Doug Seven of DotNetJunkies and SqlJunkies fame. Amazingly enough we work in the same building @ ms, but have never met - it’s cool b/c we both started c