• Anil John describes how Windows authentication works in an Internet scenario.
• Nuno Silva posts part one of a three part series on extending ASP.NET
• Lisa Wollin has a cross-browser script for creating mouse over effects.
• Jeff Atwood talks about what to do with the broken features of SmartNavigation.
• Charles Young has an article about the ten commandments of Biztalk pipeline stream processing.

A couple people have left comments here about running into the following error in Reporting Services:

The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish secure channel for SSL/TLS.

There are a number of reasons this error can occur, so it will involve some digging to get to the root cause. Most of the problems revolve around a failure to verify the SSL certificate on the report server. You might see the error because:

• The name for the certificate does not match the name of the server
• The certificate has expired or is considered invalid.

A good way to troubleshoot is to browse to the report server with Internet Explorer (https://machinename/reportserver) and see if IE complains.

There are also some less obvious reasons the error might occur. For example, the system time might be incorrect - making it appear as if the certificate has expired (when it has not), or has not yet been created (a certificate from the future!). Set the clock correctly.

If IE likes the cert, there might be a configuration issue. The URL used by the Report Manager to communicate with the ReportServer is found in a file under the Report Manager directory by the name of RSWebApplication.config. Find the <ReportServerUrl> element and make sure the URL matches the name on the certificate (which will match the name of the server). Hint: using https://localhost/reportserver is not going to work.

If you are in an environment that does not require SSL, and you are 100% positive you want payroll reports to cross the ether in plain text, you can find the RSReportServer.config file in the ReportServer directory and set SecureConnectionLevel Value=”0”.

I’m sure this is not the exhaustive list, but hopefully it will help someone out.

• Rick Strahl walks through the design and implementation of a cookie utility class for ASP.NET
• Rico Mariani has performance tips for library writers.
• Bertrans Le Roy describes a scenario where you want to override LoadViewState for a web control.
• Adam Machanic demonstrates caveats around SQL Server's TEXT datatype.
• Josh Crosby posts some interview questions to ask a potential SQL Server DBA.
• Krzysztof Cwalina discusses the myth of interface as contract.
• Eric Nelson has some news about Reporting Services in 2005.

My impatience rushed me into tempting fate. Instead of waiting for the full moon to rise tomorrow evening, I started my BizTalk install Sunday afternoon. (There is also a lunar eclipse tomorrow evening - a blood moon, visible everywhere except from Australia - sorry John).

I’m happy to say the installation went swimmingly. The HelloWorld Orchestration sample spit out an invoice, and much celebration ensued.

So, what are the keys to a successful BizTalk installation? Let me tell you what worked for me.

1: Read John Elliot’s incredibly clever and Shakespearean inspired ‘Installing BizTalk 101’. (Sorry, that link is no longer available. Perhaps John will send me the contents....)

2: Follow Luke Nyswonger’s “The QuickStart Guide to Installing & Configuring Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004” step by step. Let me quote prose from Ray Bradbury’s well-known short story “A Sound Of Thunder”:

Stay on the path. Don’t go off it. I repeat. Don’t go off it. For any reason! If you fall off, there’s a penalty.”

The following steps are optional, but comforting if you are the suspicious sort.

3: I took Anil’s suggestion and added a candle to the mix. The candle I used carried the delicate scent of a blueberry harvest. I feel fairly confident in recommending any fruit scented candle, but avoid vanilla, cinnamon, and wild honysuckle.

(Note: be sure not to use those cheap little birthday candles because the process takes a while. You’ll need to sustain a good 3-6 hour burn. Also, remember to check the fire codes first if you are conducting the ritual inside a place of business).

4. I also placed a small Ganesh (remover of obstacles) figurine on the target machine. Figure 1 will give you an idea of how to arrange the candle and charm to maximize your chances of success.

Figure 1: BizTalk installations should place candles on the left - good luck charms on the right.

P.S. In all seriousness, thanks to Lee and Luke for offering to help out and giving me some pointers. 

What do MARS and the new Edit and Continue features have in common?

• Both were technically difficult to implement
• I never expected either to show up.

Whenever discussions cropped up about these features the pushback always seemed to indicate both required major disruptions to the lowest level code you can imagine, and possibly changing the gravitational constant. Now these features are here in beta.

Edit and continue (E&C) allows a developer to edit code in a running application and continue running the updated application without having to stop, compile, and launch the debugger again. It’s amazing the range of responses this feature generates. Jonathon Goodyear proclaimed it would be a colossal mistake for Microsoft to not ship this feature in 2005. Sam Gentile (who is a C# MVP, just in case he didn’t tell you), feels E&C will ruin software development.

In the end these discussions always collapse into some sort of three way language war between people who use semicolons, people who don’t use semicolons, and people who use Smalltalk. It’s odd how that happens. I wonder what happens inside the meeting rooms around Redmond when this feature came up for discussion?

I don’t see myself ever using E&C, except maybe once every two years when some weird bug crops up in a windows service with a long setup time. Given it has taken 4 or more years to work this hot potato into the runtime, I’m sure I would have picked other features I could use in day to day work and never miss E&C.

At least with E&C you can take it or leave it. MARS, on the other hand, seems to be sneaking in with an impact on anyone using the native .NET SQL Server client.

Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS) lets a client have more than one pending request on a given connection. What does this mean in code? Consider the following snippet:

SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection("[connection string]");
connection.Open();
SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand("[query 1]", connection);
SqlDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader();
SqlCommand command2 = new SqlCommand("[query 2]", connection);
SqlDataReader reader2 = command2.ExecuteReader();

I just ran this with the October CTP of Whidbey and SQL Server. The application runs without error. In .NET 1.1, however, we would see an exception:

Unhandled Exception: System.InvalidOperationException: There is already an open
DataReader associated with this Connection which must be closed first.

The Technet document introducing MARS gives explanations and use cases for where this behavior is useful, and it also mentions: “In conclusion, we can say that MARS is all about getting rid of "Connection Busy", a significant improvement to the programming model.”. It does sound attractive on the surface, but…

You can ask anyone in the ASP.NET or ADO.NET newsgroups (like Bill, for instance), and they can tell you the aforementioned exception shows up time and time again in questions. The exception is usually the first clue a new developer has that they are not closing database connections. Oh well, you say, they will just have to learn the hard way, what impact is in it for me?

For starters, make sure to read the sections on “Performance and Cost Considerations” and “MARS Deadlocks” as food for thought. Even more interesting is the MARS FAQ on Angel Saenz-Badillos blog. Suddenly, creating a SqlCommand isn’t going to be quick and relatively free (and the OleDb provider has all sorts of caveats to watch for). MARS is on by default, and there really is no way to disable the feature to recover the cost or avoid the worst case scenarios for the feature.

ADO.NET seems to be replanting new pitfalls over the old ones we left behind in ADO. Surely, there must be some driving reason for this complexity in ADO.NET.

Could it be something required to build ObjectSpaces?

Question came in today about the SetReportParameters web service method of Reporting Services.

The name SetReportParameters is a bit misleading, and the documentation isn’t extremely clear. The method does not pass parameters to a report for rendering. Instead, the method has the same effect as modifying the parameter properties in the report designer. You can programmatically set valid values and prompt strings, etc. SetReportParameters is more of a “design time” method.

When SSRS goes to render a report, the parameter values come from one of three sources.

First, there could be a default parameter value specified in the report definition. If a default value exists SSRS will use the value, but you can override the default by passing a new parameter value using one of the techniques in the second source of parameter values.

The second source of a parameter value depends on how you access the Report Server. With URL access, you can pass a parameter value in the query string (&ParamName=Europe). If you are using the web service, then the ReportingService.Render web method accepts an array of type ParameterValue. The documentation online includes an example of how to pass the parameter values.

Finally, if there is a parameter left that does not have a default value, and you did not specify a value in the query string or in the web service call, SSRS has no choice but to prompt the user to enter a value. If you have hidden the parameter input area or the toolbar, the Report Server will throw an exception, otherwise you’ll see the TextBox and DropDownList controls appear for the user to select values.

Hope this helps…

I’m glad you are here, gentle reader. I hope you’ve arrived in an understanding mood, because I feel compelled to unburden myself at your expense. For the last four months, I’ve practiced the art of deception at work.

You see, every few weeks our CEO brings up the topic of BizTalk Server 2004. We talk vaguely about how BizTalk might help us deploy solutions for our clients. A discussion ensues about XML and healthcare schemas. Eventually, someone will ask me if I’d had a chance to investigate the technology more thoroughly.

“Well”, I say, “the Canadian project we picked up has required more of my attention then I originally thought. I have not had a chance to dig into BizTalk yet”.

Not exactly true.

Other times I say: “I’ve been working with the statistician on algorithms for severity adjustment of patient diagnoses, but I’ll try to squeeze BizTalk into the schedule real soon”.

A little fib.

My dear reader, I’m about to give you the truth of the matter. Here is the real reason I have not devoted my research time to this marvelous product known as BizTalk Server.

I CAN’T GET THE @##@*^% PIECE OF @^*% TO INSTALL AND I’VE TRIED FIFTEEN #&#*^% TIMES AND I’M AFRAID THE BOSS WILL THINK I’M SOME SORT OF #&#**^% DIMWIT.

There. It’s off my chest. It’s in the open.

Ok, technically, it “installs”, but I’m impotent when it comes to running the configuration wizard. I’ve tried on multiple machines. I’ve tried with fewer features. Not once have I made it through ConfigFramework.exe without a severe error. BizTalk hates me, but I have a plan.

One week from today, on October 27th, will bring a full moon. I know where I can buy some chickens, and I found a 1-900 hotline with virgins who say they will do anything. In the evening of October 27th - I will try once again to install BizTalk Server 2004.

I’m feeling better now, having admitted my hideous ruse to you, dear reader. I hope you don’t think any less of me than you already did.

October 27th.

Stay tuned for details.