• Biztalk taught me, not to put more than 65000 files in one folder
• Microsoft CRM taught me not to do more than 1024 joins in one select statement (if you're working with SQL 2005 and newer)
• Ibatis taught me not to use more than 2100 parameter in a sql command
• Some stupid code taught me not to select 50000 rows and store them in session

Recently I moved my Microsoft CRM installation to a new server. This showed to be surprisingly easy. However I had a some time consuming problems, configuring the outlook client afterwards. When trying to connect to the server through the Configuration Wizard I'd get an errormessage The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized.

Accept this error, and a new message pops up: Mandatory updates for Microsoft Dynamics CRM could not be applied successfully. Try running the application again. 

The first message indicates that some authentication settings was messed up. Doing a lot of googling gave so many suggestions on how to solve this. Add the website to intranet zone in internet explorer, install Internet Facing Deployment tool (IFD Tool) and lots of other stuff, but nothing helped me.

Spending a lot of time on this getting nowhere, I decided to move on to the second error that indicated that there could be some update for the Outlook Client. And there is, you can get it here: rollup 7

Installing this made both errors go away, but of course a new error popped up. This time a big messy messagebox containing a lot of xml, claims that a wrong name for the server, has been entered in the Configuration Database. In the MSCRM_Config i found a table called Server that has a column Name that contained the name of the old server. When this value was changed to the name of the new server, everything worked.

The other day, I had to convert some old reports from Report Server 2005 to be able to compile in Visual Studio 2008.

The first challenge about this was, that all the developers at the clients place runs VS 2008, but the SQL Server is 2005 - hence the developers only runs SQL 2005 on their dev machines. This results in VS not being able to recognize the report projects.

Solution for the first problem is, to install Business Intelligence Studio 2008 from the SQL Server 2008 installation. I ran the full installer, but only selected BI to be installed, and it does not seem to interfer with the actual SQL 2005 instance, that is running on the dev machine.

Second problem is, that these reports is using a custom assembly. The reports all referenced the custom assembly, but building the project failed - claiming it couldn't find the assembly. It appears, that the assembly has to be copied to a directory under Visual Studio, since reports sucks. The directory in my case was C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies. But the final solution to this would be, to add a post build event to the project copying the assembly to the correct directory: copy "$(TargetPath)" "$(DevEnvDir)PrivateAssemblies"

 So now it builds... everybody is happy... hehe ... heard that before :)

The reports still fails runtime on the server. The custom assembly needs to be deployed, in this case in the folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.2\Reporting Services\ReportServer\bin.

Note that the mentioned folders is pretty much different from versions of Visual Studio and SQL Server. The mentioned folders are pretty much standard for Visual Studio 2008, but is very much taken from my own installation, and may vary from setup to setup.

Update 20091125: Whatever team in MS who does the reporting services fucked up again. Even though you can compile the reports under 2008 and have them running on the production server, they will not work if you modify them in VS 2008 and try to deploy it on an SQL Server 2005. They changed the schema again, so it seems there's no way you can edit reports in VS 2008 and run it on SQL 2005 - you need to have VS 2005 installed.

Erik Ejlskov posted this great tip on how to format dates in sql scripts to avoid localization issues. {ts '2009-05-11 23:00:00'}

I’ve been messing a bit today, with installing the Outlook Client for Microsoft CRM. I had a few issues regarding my own infrastructure, but got that solved in a short time.

But when I got it up and running there was one thing that was really annoying, that Google couldn’t give me an answer to. When I synchronized with the server, all appointments and other items that were categorized as [CRM] regarding: <some account>.

Seems fair enough, but I’d like my appointments from CRM to have another color, so I can easily see which appointments should be invoiced, and which is private. But this did not seem to be possible. Trying to do this, the CRM category is not editable at all.

As mentioned Google gave no answers, and some MVP at a Microsoft forum claimed, that it is not possible to edit the color of the CRM category. What a bummer.

But hey…. The answer is quite simple. In Outlook go to folder view, right click Mailbox select Properties for… click the button Upgrade to Color Categories…

This will create new categories for all the items that you’ve already related to CRM. And these categories are editable. If in the future, you add some new appointments related to a customer, that doesn’t have a category yet, just find the Upgrade to Color Categories…  button again.

Yesterday Microsoft released Silverlight v3. Trying to install the new version I had a few sad findings. First of all, Silverlight v3 is not supported on Windows 7 with IE 8. I sure couldn't install it, and figured it might be because Win7 is still in Beta or the fact, that I'm running the 64 bit version of the OS. But check their system requirements:

While trying to figure out what was going on, I tried to see what would happen if I ran the 64 bit version of IE8, and discovered that silverlight does not support the 64 bit version at all. But ok... Adobe flash doesn't support the 64 bit version either.

I think, that it's weird.

I started writing a small application, which can handle objects in Pocket Outlook Object Model (POOM) items, aka Appointments, Contacts etc.

Writing a simple LinQ query to select my appointments, with a specific subject:

IEnumerable<Appointment> filteredAppointments = from appointment in appointments

                    where appointment.Subject == "Cornelius 2001"

                    select appointment;

 I was astonished to find, that this gives a compilation error, with a description saying “Could not find an implementation of the query pattern for source type”. Since I previously did a lot of work with POOM, I’m not that surprised with the fact, that there are always surprises.

Search Google for 5 minutes gave the solution. Explicitly specify the type of the object you want to select:

IEnumerable<Appointment> filteredAppointments = from Appointment appointment in appointments

                    where appointment.Subject == "Cornelius 2001"

                    select appointment;

The last year or so, I’ve had a problem just about every time, I’ve restored a database that was backed up from another server.  After every restore, the applications I’ve been working with, throws an exception with authentications errors. The last project I worked on, we could solve this by deleting the user from the DB and add again.  A pretty weird solution, but it worked. But today I ran into the same problem, on another application, where I wasn’t able to delete the user for some reasons. So what to do? It would be nice to find the right solution to this topic, and not just the workaround I’ve been using previously.

The last few months I’ve had the pleasure of working with Erik Ejlskov, who knows a lot about MSSQL Server, so why not just ask him? As usual he was just about, to send a mail to everybody in the office with a solution to this.

If you get the failing authentication, after restoring a database, run the following sproc:

EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Update_One', '[username]', '[username]';

 I wonder what Update_One means, maybe Erik can give an answer to that tomorrow. Anyway it works, and I wish that I'd known this before, since it's really been bugging me.

Just reinstalled my primary laptop with Windows 7 RC. To try out something new I decided to install the 64 bit version. The installation worked pretty smooth. About an hour after I started the install, I had a running laptop. No drivers needed or any stuff like that.

So far I only discovered two issues running the Windows 7 64 bit version. Cisco discontinued developing ther VPN client for 64 bit operating systems. Apparently they build a new client called "Cisco AnyConnect". The only bitch about this is, that you have to be a registered user to download the software. I never understood that thing with Cisco - a little bit of googling and you have the client.

Daemon tools cannot be installed yet, I hope Daemon up them selves for RTM - they seem really ignorant saying "we don't support beta os's" (Bastards). This especially annoys me, because all of the downloads from MSDN is provided as an iso. At least they can be unpacked with winrar, wich basically wants me to forget that Daemon tools exists.

The conclusion of my freshly installed RC as a primary machine is: Cool. The more I start using Windows 7, the more impressed I get. Microsoft has really done a great job on this one.

A couble of days ago, Windows 7 RC1 was released on MSDN. Since I was pretty amazed by Build 7000, I couldn't wait installing the RC1. Since I'm pretty much depending on my laptop being functional these days, I can't reinstall on the primary just yet. So I decided to try an upgrade from Build 7000. This does not seem to be possible, during the install it claims not to be able to upgrade the current operating system.

Since I really want to checkout the RC1, I decided to try to install it on my MacBook Air. I did not expect this to be without problems, but accually it went quite smooth, but with a few issues.

I have not yet found the golden solution to the issues, but I did a few workarounds, to accually beeing able to use the computer.

First thing I did after installing, was as usual to enroll the macbook into my domain. After a reboot I couldn't login. This is a funny thing about the MacBook Air. Apple got some idea on this machine, to spare away a few buttons. One of them is the delete button. One way to hit delete is to hit fn + backspace. This doesn't work with my new windows 7 installation. On the logon screen you can choose "Ease of access". One thing is to have an onscreen keyboard, wich gives you the delete button. What an irritating thing, but at least I can logon now.

When I got pass the logon screen I noticed, that the keyboard is accually very much fucked up. Buttons doesn't give you the expected keystrokes, when using some special characters. For example "$" is replaced with "<", "\" is hit byt "alt" + $ ... this is quite annoying, but I find it as a result of running a Microsoft operating system on a Mac. It wasn't that gr8 under XP either.  Maybe I'll find a solution for this some day.

When I first got my MacBook Air, it took me tons of time, to figure out, that right mouse click is two fingers on the touch pad, this doesn't work anymore. I hope that the issues regarding the keyboard and touchpad is, because Bootcamp isn't updated to support win7 yet.

Next finding was, that the sound doesn't work. Googling a bit I found the drivers for the soundcard. I can't provide a link for the drivers, but if you google for "Vista_R221.zip" you can find drivers for the realtek sound card, that works.

Daemon tools still doesn't work, but that's because they ignore the fact, that windows 7 is way further than an early beta.

Conclusion of this installation is, that Windows 7 RC1 seems even better than build 7000, but if you run it on a macbook air, you asked for trouble.... can't wait till next week-end, where I hopefully will have the time to install it on my Lenovo.

Update 20090715: Hahaha... the solution to my keyboard issues was so simple, that i totally looked in the wrong place. When trying to install Bootcamp under windows 7, I got some unkown error. This made me look towards googling, and was trying all kinda suff with Bootcamp update for Vista and blablabla.... Since I don't use the MacBook Air very much, I left it with these small issues, and decided to live with them for now.

But since it's vacation time, I got some spare time to deal, with these small things that bugs me. I realised, that the real issue was, that I couldn't install Bootcamp at all. Trying to run an update for Vista showed quite useless, since it is an update, and the initial Bootcamp never got in.

On the OsX disc 1 there's a library with bootcamp -> drivers -> apple. Run the AppleKeyboardInstaller.exe and AppleMultiTouchTrackPadInstaller.exe, and everything is solved. No issues left at all, just a smooth MacBook Air running Windows 7 RC without any problems.