After a few minutes of troubleshooting, I discovered that the issue was simply that the production environment was using a different user account for Umbraco to access the database than I was using locally, and even though I changed the connection string to reflect this, I forgot to associate the username with the database after the restore:

After checking the appropriate database roles for my user account everything was working again. Since Umbraco 5 doesn’t error or give any warning about why it is at the install screen, this wasted a little bit of my time. Hopefully this helps one of you troubleshoot a similar issue.

-Carson


The pre-application start initialization method Start on type System.Web.WebPages.Deployment.PreApplicationStartCode threw an exception with the following error message: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.


Since I opened the site up as an ASP.NET MVC3 Web Site, adding the view added the following to the Web.config:

<add key="webpages:Enabled" value="true" />

Since it does this behind the scenes, I was confused about how the error started, and wasn’t able to catch it until doing a compare on a fresh Umbraco web.config, and the one that was in the project root. Hopefully this saves some of you some time

@Html.CheckBoxFor(m => m.IsEnabled)

will render

<input id="IsEnabled" type="checkbox" value="true" name="IsEnabled">
<input type="hidden" value="false" name="IsEnabled">


The reason this is done is because a form will not post anything to the server for an unchecked checkbox. In ASP.NET MVC, most of the time you are going to want a “false” value to be posted to the model binder, so the hidden value of false is there so that a value is posted back whether the checkbox is checked or not. If the checkbox is not checked, the form value for “IsEnabled” will be “false”, and if it is checked, both values will be posted as “true,false”. The model binder understands this, and will automatically take the true value from the collection of values. I have read that Ruby on Rails and MonoRail also use a similar technique.

First, create a new partial class in the same namespace as your LINQ2SQL DBML file.  Name the class the same name as the file with “DataContext” at the end. For example, if my LINQ2SQL file is “Example.dbml” my class name will be “ExampleDataContext.”

Next, add a default constructor like the one shown, replacing the constructor name and connection string key to your own values:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Data.Linq;

namespace Example
{
    partial class ExampleDataContext
    {
        public ExampleDataContext()
            : base(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["ExampleConnectionString"].ConnectionString, mappingSource)
        {

        }
    }
}

Now, whenever you edit your DBML file, make sure to set the “ApplicationSettings” property to false, and delete the connection string that was auto-generated.

Now your data layer will always use the correct connection string (when you use the default constructor), and the DBML designer will stop tossing in extra connection strings.

is an easy way to add a couple of users:

but with over 40 to add, it would take too long.  How can I speed this up?  dsadd to the rescue!  The command line you would use to add a new user is:

dsadd user "CN=First Last,CN=User,DC=corp,DC=productiveedge,DC=com" -samid first.last -pwd qwerty123! -mustchpwd yes

so you can create a script to add users to a domain relatively easily.  Note the:

-mustchpwd yes

at the end of the line.  That is added to require the user to change their password on the first login.

A wizard pops up and you can test your configuration pretty quickly.  If you did a default install of anything other than SQL Express, your instance name (the part to the right of the ‘\’ below) will default to MSSQLSERVER and shouldn’t be shown in the server name.  If you installed SQLExpress, your instance name will be SQLEXPRESS.

And, as a bonus, once you get it working you can open it in a text editor and extract your connection string. If it doesn’t work on your local box, try it on the server itself. If that works, skip on down to the end of this for the culprit.

You can also attempt to telnet directly to port 1433 (the default TCP/IP port for SQL Server) to test connectivity.  You won’t see anything once you get there, but if the connection succeeds, you are in business.

If you are not running SQL Server locally, you could also get into trouble if remote connections are not allowed. To check/change this, Open up Management Studio and right click on the instance you are connected to:

open the properties window:

and go to the connections tab and insure remote connections are allowed:

If none of that works, the problem you are probably having is related to the setup of SQL Server itself. Open up the SQL Server Configuration Manager:

then go to the SQL Server Network Configuration:

then double click on the Protocols for MSSQLSERVER:

and make sure that TCP/IP is enabled:

If TCP/IP is enabled, you may be running into firewall issues (it requires port 1433 by default, but it can be configured to a different port).   To see which port your SQL instance is running on, double click on the TCP/IP icon to open the properties page and on the IP Address tab you will find the TCP port you are running on:

SELECT Name, OBJECT_DEFINITION(OBJECT_ID)
FROM sys.procedures sp
WHERE OBJECT_DEFINITION(OBJECT_ID) LIKE '%Language%'

On to specifics (altered to insure confidentiality). 

• Initially, in the UI there are three radio buttons that correspond to an integer column in the database (color).  The value is set on a public property of an object that corresponds to the table (widgets) in the database.  There is a corresponding dimension table (widgetColorCode) in the database, but there is a missing foreign key constraint and the naming convention doesn’t make it easy to track down the dimension domain.
• Time passes.
• A new UI is built for a new company that only manufactures red Widgets.  The combo boxes are removed, and the value is set upon submission to the constant 1. 
• A derivative of the new UI is commissioned that is for a company only supplying blue Widgets.   There is nothing in the code to help the programmer find what value this property should have. 

So the code for the Widget class looks something like this:

    public class Widget
    {
        public int Color { get; set; }
    }

I am a firm believer in having enumerations corresponding to all dimensions in a project.  There is a performance hit for converting an enumeration to an integer, but it is far outweighed by the increased maintainability of the code.  By explicitly setting the values for the enumeration and adding an XML comment relating it to the dimension table, you can greatly increase the maintainability of the code. When starting from scratch on a project, I will typically have something along the lines of:

    ///

    /// corresponds to the Widget fact table
    /// 

    public class Widget
    {
        public WidgetColor Color { get; set; }
    }

    ///

    /// corresponds to the WidgetColorCode dimension table
    /// 

    public enum WidgetColor
    {
        Red = 1,
        White = 2,
        Blue = 3
    }

But, that is a personal preference, and refactoring the entire code base at this point can’t be justified.  What can be done quickly to lessen the impact of this when further maintenance is required?  Visual Studio comes to the rescue!  By simply adding an XML comment to the property, we can define the dimension so that hovering over the property will display the dimension information (Please excuse the missing pointer in the image, trust me, I am hovering over the Color property.):

    ///

    /// corresponds to the Widget fact table
    /// 

    public class Widget
    {
        ///

        /// corresponds to the WidgetColorCode dimension table
        /// 1: Red, 2: White, 3: Blue
        /// 

        public int Color { get; set; }
    }

 EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail
@recipients = 'lsmithmier@productiveedge.com',
@body = 'Just testing the mail',
@subject = 'Sending Mail using Database Mail' ;

When I first ran it on my database server (SQL Server 2008 R2) I got the following error:

Msg 15281, Level 16, State 1, Procedure sp_send_dbmail, Line 0
SQL Server blocked access to procedure 'dbo.sp_send_dbmail' of component
'Database Mail XPs' because this component is turned off as part of the
security configuration for this server. A system administrator can enable the
use of 'Database Mail XPs' by using sp_configure. For more information about
enabling 'Database Mail XPs', see "Surface Area Configuration"
in SQL Server Books Online.

So I cranked up Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio and set email up:

1.  Open up the Management section and right click on the Database Mail item:

2.  Choose Configure Database Mail

3.  Click Next

4.  Click Next

5.  Click Yes

6.  Set the Profile name and choose Add an SMTP account:

7.  Enter your settings:

8.  Set the profile as both Public and Default:

9.  Click Next

10. Click Finish

11. Click Close

and it is all setup!  Really easy compared to the old way of setting email up with SQL Server.  Then I re-ran the query and got the following response:

Mail queued.

But then what?  I ran a quick query and found that the email wasn’t sent correctly:

 use [msdb]
SELECT *
FROM sysmail_mailitems
GO
SELECT *
FROM sysmail_log
GO 

so I looked back over my settings and updated the port number to hit the outgoing relay and everything started working!

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="UploadControl.ascx.cs"
    Inherits="WebApplication1.UserControls.UploadControl" %>
    
    
    
    
    
    Submit

with the code behind set up to store the uploaded files in the database using LINQ:

        protected void btnSubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            LinerModelDataContext dataContext = new LinerModelDataContext();
            foreach (UploadedFile file in RadUpload1.UploadedFiles)
            {
                byte[] bytes = new byte[file.ContentLength];
                file.InputStream.Read(bytes, 0, file.ContentLength);
                Attachment attachment = new Attachment();
                attachment.FileName = file.GetName();
                attachment.BinaryAttachment = bytes;
                attachment.CustomerID = this.CustomerID;
                dataContext.Attachments.InsertOnSubmit(attachment);
            }
            dataContext.SubmitChanges();
        }

I then just added the EditFormSettings section to RadGrid1 and I was able to upload files:

But my grid wasn’t refreshing and I wasn’t getting any notification that the upload was complete. So, to provide the user experience I wanted, I exposed an event to the grid from the upload control by modifying the code behind of the UserControl. I added a delegate, and exposed the event as follows:

    public delegate void UploadHandler();

    public partial class UploadControl : System.Web.UI.UserControl
    {
...
        public event UploadHandler Upload;

        protected void btnSubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            LinerModelDataContext dataContext = new LinerModelDataContext();
            foreach (UploadedFile file in RadUpload1.UploadedFiles)
            {
                byte[] bytes = new byte[file.ContentLength];
                file.InputStream.Read(bytes, 0, file.ContentLength);
                Attachment attachment = new Attachment();
                attachment.FileName = file.GetName();
                attachment.Attachment1 = bytes;
                attachment.CustomerID = this.CustomerID;
                dataContext.Attachments.InsertOnSubmit(attachment);
            }
            dataContext.SubmitChanges(ConflictMode.ContinueOnConflict);
            if (Upload != null)
            {
                Upload.Invoke();
            }
        }

and changing the FormTemplate to be:

(please note that the syntax highlighter I am using mangled the code by changing OnUpload to be onupload in the above source) and adding the handler to the main page:

        protected void UploadControl1_Upload()
        {
            RadGrid1.MasterTableView.IsItemInserted = false;
            RadGrid1.Rebind();
        }