Global.asax and PrecompiledApp.config

I spent the better part of the day and a bit more a few days back trying to figure out this problem!

I have put some exception handling int he application_error event of my global.asax, and everything ran smoothly on my dev and staging box. For some reason, I could not get our production environment to handle the exception handling for our unhandled exceptions. At first I thought it was our logging mechanism, but after a few tests, we figured the code was ok.

We looked at permissions for the account running the site, but there was nothing wrong there. Finally there was a link that a co-worker gave me that suggested that the PrecompiledApp.Config be removed from the root of the application. As it turns out, that file has been missing (due to some deployment issues), so we put it back in and it started to work. The application_error event was finally firing. I can't figure out exactly why the config file is needed, but it is for precompiled applications. Hope it helps someone!...read more!

Creating my LLC

As of June 5th of 2007, Angle Technologies, LLC is hereby incorporated!

I finally got around to getting my LLC in place after some setbacks. I contacted an attorney referred to me by my brother. After discussing with the attorney what the purpose of my business was (mostly software) we both decided to move forward with an LLC over any other types of business models.

After that, everything just seemed too easy! He asked for the following information:
My name and address
Company name and address
Name and address of any other owners of the company (not required if you solely own it)
Purpose of the business
Name and address of secretary for the business (must be someone other than the owner, as they are responsible for keeping minutes for meetings)

Within an hour, the State of Texas came back with my official documentation delivered to the attorney, who then forwarded them on to me.

I had already gotten my domain names and I will continue to brand the name and get a website up and running to tell the public more about what the company offers in services.

If you are in Texas and would like to get incorporated, please let me know via the comment section and I can pass along the attorney's info....read more!

Microsoft Surface

If everyone hasn't already heard by now, Microsoft has created a coffee table: Surface/...read more!

ASP.NET Web Application Project problems

This past weekend I was working with a continuous integration build with an ASP.NET project. I was attempting to get a website staged on a staging environment by using msbuild. I build the site and published it to another directory that had IIS pointed to it. Due to some reference issues (particularly, with the default web project template that I was using, I could not get my referenced assemblies to be available for msbuild to build the project), I switched to the Web Application Project template, that basically took the VS.NET 2003 project template, and copied all my files from the old project to the new one.

Everything debugged and ran just fine, but when I published the site and hosted it via IIS, I was being plagued with an error somewhat like this one:

The type 'objectname' exists in both
'c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET
Files\\assemblyName.DLL'
and 'c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET
Files\\assemblyName.DLL'


I couldn't figure out why I had this issue. I could run the site just fine from VS.NET 2005, but could not actually publish it without getting that error. Searching online only yielded deleting my temporary asp.net files, bouncing IIS or even bouncing the machine. None of the issues resolved the problem.

I finally found the resolution, and it I wish I could find the post that had the resolution so I could give due credit to them, but basically the Web Project (default out of VS.NET) uses the CodeFile attribute to find the code behind file. Changing CodeFile to CodeBehind on all my aspx pages resolved the issue.

Hope this helps someone!
...read more!

Volunteer service

I am trying to get a volunteer service up and running that will allow users to find volunteer activities by zip code without any log in or required information.

For now, the service will be hosted here: http://www.angletechnologies.com/...read more!

Great introduction to StructureMap 2.0

I've always been intrigued by StructureMap and Spring.net, but I've never known really how or why I should use them. I guess I never had the visibility in their benefits, but I figured that they could come in handy at some point.

Recently Jeremy Miller released version 2 of StructureMap, but it was still hard for me to get solid examples without previous knowledge of what the tools do.

He recently posted an introduction to StructureMap 2.0, and it really helped me get a better understanding of how to use it, and I can see the benfits immediately from the examples on the intro.

I still have a few questions on overall usage, mostly around configuration since the examples that Jeremy has revolve around configuration objects and the default implementation in some sort of startup method/event. If that is the case, would I have this enormous list if declarations? Surely this could be done in a config (and I think it does, so I'll just wait and see!)...read more!

ASP.NET Wishlist

Steven Smith has posted his wishlist for ASP.NET. He's in Seattle for the MVP summit. You can read about the items here: http://aspadvice.com/blogs/ssmith/archive/2007/03/14/ASP.NET-Wish-List.aspx.

I would like to focus my attention on a couple:
1) Recursive FindControl - Would be cool, but, as Steven mentions, there are a few functions out there that provide this. Nice to have, but dont compromise any other deliverables for this.

2) Cache Improvements - This is huge. I dont rely too heavily on Cache, but I do use it enough to say that companies like ScaleOut have stepped up to fill in the gaps that Microsoft has made. I would like to see two things out of Steven's list: Distributed Cache and a Cache Provider Model. I'd like to see the out of the box implementation have distributed cache mechanism, but also have the ability to throw in our own implementation of cache.

I'm really excited to see the next feature set of ASP.NET....read more!