NerdyHearn Blog

Determining if MOSS is Standard or Enterprise

Mon, 9 November 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

You will often come across licensing questions regarding your MOSS installation from a number of different sources which will normally change the cost of products based on if your MOSS SharePoint installation is Enterprise or Standard edition. In the neverland that is Central Administration I never seem to be able to find what I am looking for, so for those of you in the same boat, the easiest way to tell which version you are running is by doing the following: Open up Central Admin G...

Configuring ASP.NET (And SharePoint) to use SQL-based Sessions

Thu, 29 October 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

ASP.NET allows for servers to store their session variables and state information on a SQL server, which is a very useful ability, especially in the case of running clustered servers, or a server farm of web front ends in the case of SharePoint. When you move to a clustered or server farm scenario, you can no longer use InProc, or single-server-only session solutions, as they must be shared across multiple physical machines in order to prevent continuity errors for end users. It is not a v...

Configuring Reporting Services for Email Subscriptions

Fri, 23 October 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

Reporting Services has many powerful features, especially when it comes to something that we use on a regular basis: report subscriptions. Report subscriptions allow users to subscribe to a specific report with specific parameters and have that report scheduled to be delivered on a regular basis. We came across one issue while enabling subscriptions for our users which was putting in the user's AD username, and was graying out the To field so it would only show up, as "username" instead of ...

Time for a change in our Domain Name System

Sat, 26 September 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

Real-time updates, social status changes across multiple websites instantly, push notifications, even instant RSS notifications. There are many things in the leaps and bounds we have made with technology today (even since last year) which prooves that we have truly moved to an instantly-notified world. My question is why have these changes not applied in the world of ICANN, domain registrars, and domain name systems? I am not talking about DNS, as there is a reason these changes often hav...

Deploying Reporting Services WebParts to SharePoint WSS and MOSS

Thu, 24 September 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

SharePoint does not natively have the web parts available to display Reporting Services reports within web parts, but this can be easily fixed. There is a WebPart Pack that ships with the reporting services installation which can easily be deployed to SharePoint. For Reporting Services 2008, this pack is available here: C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server100ToolsReporting ServicesSharePointRSWebParts.cab. If your SharePoint server is on a different server then Reporting Se...

Reading IPhone Text Messages using C# and SQLite

Fri, 18 September 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

As a much more interesting follow up post to my previous post I thought it would be interesting to share my method of accessing IPhone text messages using C# and SQLite. This is not a "live" method of accessing the text messages, in that it requires that your IPhone be synced using iTunes to get the latest backup of your IPhone. When the backup is completed it backs up all data from your phone's databases, which are based upon SQLite. A...

Reading A Database Schema in SQLite with C#

Wed, 16 September 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

As an introduction to my next, still secret, blog post, I would like to go over how you can read the schema from a SQLite database, using C# and System.Data.SQLite. This is a fairly simple process, but not immediately apparent if you are trying to do what I needed to do. In my case, I simply wanted to open an SQLite database (if you aren't familiar with SQLite, it is just a file-based DBMS), and read all of the tables withi...

Setting up a real VPN with your every day consumer router and DD-WRT

Thu, 10 September 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

I have been using DD-WRT for over a year now and have loved every minute of it. DD-WRT is just a replacement firmware for your router's default firmware, in my case Linksys. It is based on top of a linux distribution and allows the "true nerd" to take their router to the next level, with a number of previously enterprise-only router features. I have always been a remote desktop guy, and used to just RDP into my "server" computer in my h...

Fixing Virtual PC 2007 To Run On Windows 7

Thu, 27 August 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

I have been running Windows 7 for about 2 weeks now and am absolutely loving it. I recently came across the need to once again start loading up my ridiculous amount of testing and development virtual machines, and to my dismay, Virtual PC 2007 did not work as I expected. I am running Windows 7 x64 Professional. Installing Virtual PC 2007 worked without issue, but upon opening it for the first time I received this message: "Virtual PC could not open the virtual machine network services drive...

Creating a PDF with C# and iTextSharp

Wed, 26 August 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

I recently came across a situation in which I, oddly enough, needed to simply embed a single image in a PDF file. I figured I would share my thoughts on this particular example, as there are a number of different open source options out there for creating PDF files in C#. For my use, I decided to go with iTextSharp, which is a port of the popular Java library iText. I went with this option for 2 main reasons: I have used...

Determining if a computer is a laptop or desktop in C#

Mon, 24 August 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

There are often situations in which it is helpful to know if a user is running a laptop or desktop in C#, and I figured I would share one of the many ways to do so. The WMI class Win32_SystemEnclosure includes the hardware type for the physical case of the computer. So, running a simple WMI query will present you with some information. This base query is: SELECT * FROM Win32_SystemEnclosure There are a number of objects returned from this query, but for our example, we are interested in...

Creating High Quality Images with C# and GDI

Thu, 13 August 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

I have posted in the past about creating organizational charts using C# and GDI, but I have recently come across a scenario in which I needed to make the charts show up as 100% quality (they were blurred because of the default, lower-quality GDI output). Low and behold GDI does indeed support the ability to change output quality to a Bitmap, and while it isn't the easiest thing to figure out originally, it really isn't that bad. So I figure the best way is to jump right into the code, so h...

Creating an MD5 String Extension method in C#

Wed, 12 August 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

Extension methods in C# allow for some very useful additions to the base .NET string library, and I recently came across the need to have an MD5 of a string, so I figured it would be very useful to add it as an extension method. This allows for you to use a string, defined as follows: string temp = "My string" And obtain the MD5 of the string by executing the following: string md5 = temp.MD5(); Without further ado, here is the code. Please note that this will only work in .NET 3.5 an...

Using Multi-Value Parameters in SQL Server Reporting Services

Mon, 10 August 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

SQL Server Reporting Services are very powerful for presenting users with the data necessary for their reporting needs. The situation often arises in which a user wants their data in a list, checkable by item as a parameter as opposed to simply a substring filter for the report. This feature is very similar to how Excel provides a drop-down of value filters, in which you can check "Select All" or the specific item values you want to have present for each row. This raises a more difficult ...

No More IPhone for Me

Tue, 4 August 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

After using the IPhone for almost a month now, and fighting constantly to figure out round-a-bout ways to sync my contacts, SMS messages, Emails, and a number of other issues, I have decided to go back to my Android Dev Phone. There are a number of reasons for this: 1) Like I said, I am very reliant on Google's infrastructure, and as we've seen with Apple's decision to ban the Google Voice app, they don't like to play well with Google 2) I am starting to think of Apple as if they were com...

Creating a reusable web client for PUT, POST, and DELETE in C#

Thu, 23 July 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

C# has a very basic and pretty easy-to-understand methodology for sending and receiving web requests, but seeing as I use this type of operation on a regular basis it has served me very well over the years to have my own class that I have added to as needed. I figured I would share this with those of you interested in the hope that it would make your lives easier as well. This class works very easily, allowing a user to specify the parameters, timeout, and user agent as required, and PUT, PO...

Don't Ever Do Business with MochaSoft

Tue, 21 July 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

I was recently browsing for a Remote Desktop Client on the IPhone and came across Mocha Remote Desktop. I purchased the product without fully reading the description, which states it does not support anything but Windows XP. That didn't seem like such a big deal, as I could wait, so I emailed their support to ask them if they would add support for Windows server anytime soon. The responses from the "support" from this company were absolutely outrageous with attitude, unprofessionalism, and ...

Fixing 400 RequestLength Issue in SharePoint and IIS

Thu, 16 July 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

We recently came across an issue where a specific user was always receiving a 400 RequestLength error any time they attempted to view our SharePoint server. The issue turned out to be related to the user's group memberships and the fact that they were a member of a large number of groups. The issue arises from the limits in IIS (and therefore SharePoint) with regards to the length of header fields. By default, the limit is 16384, and in this user's case the Kerberos token was beyond that li...

Enumerating a user secure certificate store in C#

Tue, 14 July 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

Reading a user's certificate store can be a very useful thing in C#, especially when dealing with anything at a low-level Windows usage, such as checking to see if the user on a domain has a valid certificate to use an Encrypted File System (EFS). It is pretty straight-forward, so without further ado, here is how it is done:

X509Store store =
Backing up your IPhone SMS Messages to Gmail and Google AppsMon, 13 July 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

After recently migrating from an Android phone to the new IPhone 3GS, the one feature I miss the most is having my SMS messages searchable directly from within my Google Apps account.  Android has a number of applications that allow you to backup your SMS messages natively from the phone, but unfortunately, the IPhone does not.

There is an available option, however.  With that said, I would like to introduce my newest application: IPhone SMS ...

Querying LDAP from Excel directly with VBScriptTue, 7 July 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

I recently had a request to directly query LDAP from within Excel, and seeing as I thought this was a pretty cool use case, I figured I would share my solution.  Excel uses all VBScript, which can be edited from directly within Excel.  I should note that this is Excel 2007 so I have no idea how this performs in earlier versions of Excel.

My particular example case is to query for a computer name and return the computer's description.  A fairly straightforward solution, so I'll present the cod...

Fixing MOSS Search Crawler issue for "The specified address was excluded..."Thu, 2 July 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

We recently came across an issue in which some of our SharePoint MOSS documents were not available (could not be found) using MOSS Search.  Upon further investigation, the issue was coming from the actual Crawler.  We were receiving the following error in our Crawl Log (under Central Admin -> SSP -> Search Settings -> Crawl Logs):

"The specified address was excluded from the index. The crawl rules may have to be modified to include this address. (The item was deleted because it was either not...

Impersonating a user in ASP.NETWed, 1 July 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

It has been a while since I've had to do ASP.NET Impersonation, but I was presented with a situation today in which it was required.  I figured I would give a few quick tips for doing so, how to impersonate, and how you can debug some of the issues during the process.

In ASP.NET Impersonation, it is done at the entire application level.  You simply have to add an entry under the system.web entry in web.config to impersonate a user for the running process.

An example would be like the follo...

Announcing Tweets2MailSat, 27 June 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

I am very excited to announce yet another long-and-late-night project that I have been working on lately, the aptly named Tweets2Mail.  Tweets2Mail solves two of the things that I have wanted for a long time out of Twitter: reliable backup and search.  It does this by making backups of all your Twitter Direct Messages (Send and Received), Mentions (Replies) and the status updates of all of your Friends, to your IMAP email service, and most importantly, Gm...

Writing console output from a Windows form in C#Thu, 25 June 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

As simple as it seems, there is actually no way to easily write to the console 
from a Windows forms application.  You may also be asking yourself why would you ever want to do that, but the situation will arise if you are programming long enough.

One common use is for "command line" applications that only need to launch a window if an error occurs, or if you would like to drop debugging information from the launching console instead of to a message box or the system event viewer.

These a...

Reading a Microsoft Project file (mpp) in C#Wed, 24 June 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

I was recently presented with the need to read the tasks from a Microsoft Project file and to my surprise there is not a large number of information on doing so.

There is an open source project on source forge called MPJX which claims to support .NET as well, but upon further investigation I realized that it was actually embedding a virtual Java processor in .NET and then calling 
the Java-native version... yuck.

So I decided the way I would go is to use .NET Interop to invoke Microsoft P...

Fixing MOSS/WSS SharePoint errors with Alternate Access MappingsTue, 23 June 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

I was checking the logs on my development server recently and noticed that I had a large number of "Critical" errors showing up in the log with the following text:

A request was made for a URL, http://localhost, which has not been configured in Alternate Access Mappings.  Some links may point to the Alternate Access URL for the default zone, http://defaulturl.  Review the Alternate Access mappings for this Web application.

This error arises from a user accessing their SharePoint installati...

My Latest Invention - SaveMySerials.comMon, 22 June 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

For those of you who are not aware, about 3 months ago our house was broken into and we had a number of possessions stolen.  The positive story out of this is that nothing of great sentimental value was stolen and no one was injured, however, it was a big pain losing things you are used to and you definitely feel violated in your own home.

During our insurance claims I realized that I was completely un-prepared for this to happen.  I also started thinking what if I was to have a fire, somethi...

Creating an Organizational Chart using C#: Part 2Thu, 18 June 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

In part 1 of this series, I went over how to actually establish the tree layout that would be used to create an organizational chart using C#.

Now that we have established we have a loaded tree structure, we simply need to build the chart itself.

To simplify the explanation of this process, I have broken the drawing out into two sections.

The first section, BuildBlock, simply builds the actual block which will have each Employee's name and ti...

Creating an Organizational Chart using C#: Part 1Wed, 17 June 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

An organizational chart is something that many, well, organizations use.  It is a very common request and often something that takes a long time for someone to create in something like Visio.  Obviously the larger your company the more time-saving that is involved when these can be generated automatically.

This is the first part of a two-part series in which I would like to simply establish the basis, the technical layout, and the technologies that will be used to create the chart.

For the...

Updating an LDAP Property in C#Thu, 11 June 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

C# is very powerful for working with LDAP and Active Directory.  You are often presented with a situation in which you want to update the property of a value from an LDAP record, and I figured I would share with doing so as there are really two cases which have to be considered: the case with a single-valued attribute, and the case with a multi-valued (array) attribute.

Without further ado, I present to you the code:

DirectoryEntry entry = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://DC=mydomain,DC=com");
...

2 Android Apps worth looking atTue, 9 June 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

I have been using the developer phone for the Android for roughly 6 months now and I must say that I am very impressed.  It lacks in some areas where the IPhone prevails, but at the same time, it prevails in some areas (mainly data portability and openness, ease of development) where the IPhone does not.

There are 2 programs that I have learned to love which I would like to talk about very briefly:

The first is a free app, called SMS Backup.  It does exactly what it says, and backs up SMS ...

Automatically Setting File Name in SharePoint when submitting an InfoPath 2007 FormWed, 3 June 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

InfoPath is a very powerful program.  Using it with SharePoint makes it even more powerful.  However, SharePoint often requires some "magic" to be performed in order for things to work properly with InfoPath.  This time around it is a change on the InfoPath side seeing as I needed to have the ability to automatically set the filename of an InfoPath document that was saved to a form library in SharePoint.

This was actually a very easy task to complete once I figured out how to do it, but it to...

Fixing SharePoint error Log with "Preserving template record"Tue, 2 June 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

As I was doing debugging on a workflow this morning I was using the log files from web server extensions/12/Logs to do some analysis of an issue, and realized that my log files were growing astronomically in size, incredibly fast, and that this had not been an issue in the past.

I could not determine the actual cause of this issue, but after some digging came across this blog from the Microsoft ShareP...

Reading Digital Signatures from InfoPath Forms in MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 WorkflowMon, 1 June 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

InfoPath forms with SharePoint workflow is a very powerful combination, especially when you use Digital Signatures to verify the user that is completing the form.  Most workflow forms will go through more then one person, and therefore you need to be able to check when the actual form is signed by specific entities in order to continue with your workflow. 

I have created a LINQ method of reading these InfoPath files for signature information during a workflow.  Please note that this also requ...

SharePoint Browser 1 Released!Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

I am excited to announce that after making some minor changes to my SharePoint Browser project, it has now been released and is ready for general use.

Please note that this is the initial release, and I plan to add many more features in the future as I have time and as I get more requests.

Please download the software, test it to the best of your ability, let me know what you like and dislike, and I will add features as I get requests.

...

Generic Method for Loading Interfaces in C# (For a Plugin System)Sat, 30 May 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

I had some issues with loading a plugin system that I've been working on but it turned out to be not my bad coding but my bad habits:  I was improperly including a file which was confusing the activator.

Now that I've sorted out my issues, I figured I would save some of you out there some time by providing a C# Generic method to load interfaces for a plugin system.

I am aware that there is a System.AddIn method in C# 3.5, but after looking at it and starting to play with it my code looked ...

Bitmask values for Win32 File PermissionsThu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

As I have been doing a large number of work with the Win32 SDK lately, and specifically from within C#, File Permissions are often a very important aspect to check while using the Win32 SDK.  

I was not able to find a proper listing of the bitmasks that you use while checking the permission results from SDK calls such as GetEffectiveRightsFromAcl. 

I ended up digging into the WinNT.h header file to find these values, and there are many more than I am going to list here, but these are nonet...

I've Been Busy: An UpdateThu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

I thought it was a good time to update you all on where I'm at in my career, what projects I'm working on, and my life in general.

I recently started a new job about 3 months ago today.  I am doing SharePoint development for a Pharmaceutical research company, and am loving it.  I have great bosses, am confronted with new challenges daily, and it is giving me the opportunity to really apply many of my talents that I have across the board with a number of different technologies.  That being sai...

Retrieving the SID of a user or group account using the Win32 SDK and C#Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 America/Los_Angeles

SIDs are very useful for using as unique identifers, especially when you are working with computers or situations in which both local computer user accounts as well as domain accounts are available with system permissions.
SIDs are also what a large percentage of permissions-based SDK calls use, and therefore it is very useful to take a user account name and return the SID.

.NET supports some of the features of the Windows file system out of the box, but if you are looking to go much deeper ...