Check out this new guide I've written on how to set up a bulk-insert based file loader in SSIS. Pretty handy to have all these different techniques in a single post...
Setting Up A File Loader
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
SqlMembershipProvider Weirdness
Well, I learned a hard lesson tonight. I had wired up the SqlMembershipProvider for this web site I'm working on and things seemed to be working perfectly when I was testing earlier, then I noticed that I had left an "i" out of the Role Name Administrator, calling it Adminstrator instead. Simple mistake. I deleted all the users & the errant role & re-added it correctly. this evening when I came back, i couldn't get to any of the pages in my Admin directory (which was protected by access rules). No matter what I tried, i just kept getting kicked back to my log-in page.
I checked everything very carefully & couldn't find anywhere that Administrator was misspelled or anything. After a while I ended up just sitting & staring at the ASP.NET Web Site Administration tool, after a few minutes I started to read what was on the screen in front of me & wouldn't you know, the MembershipProvider uses "short-circuit" logic. Whichever access rule it comes upon first that matches it uses.
Basically what was happening was that ASP.NET was finding my "Subscriber" role before it would find my "Administrator" role. It would assume then that I was not an Administrator, had no access in the Admin directory, & dutifully kick me back to the log-in page.
Anyways, I don't know how many folks this will really apply to, but... if you happen to be wiring up a Membership provider for an ASP.NET site & you have secured subdirectories in your website based on application roles, it's good to keep this short-circuit logic in mind.
I checked everything very carefully & couldn't find anywhere that Administrator was misspelled or anything. After a while I ended up just sitting & staring at the ASP.NET Web Site Administration tool, after a few minutes I started to read what was on the screen in front of me & wouldn't you know, the MembershipProvider uses "short-circuit" logic. Whichever access rule it comes upon first that matches it uses.
Basically what was happening was that ASP.NET was finding my "Subscriber" role before it would find my "Administrator" role. It would assume then that I was not an Administrator, had no access in the Admin directory, & dutifully kick me back to the log-in page.
Anyways, I don't know how many folks this will really apply to, but... if you happen to be wiring up a Membership provider for an ASP.NET site & you have secured subdirectories in your website based on application roles, it's good to keep this short-circuit logic in mind.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Getting Started With CSS Positioning
I can't believe how simple and great this is. I'm now officially a total div zealot. I can't believe I've beem fooling around w. tables as long as I have. what a lot of wasted time. A web app that I have been working on recently has forced me to really immerse myself in CSS, and while I'm not an expert yet by any stretch, I can find my way around now at least. I guess it just takes a real project to really get some things into my brain.
The point of the post then is how to get some of this stuff into your brain. Expression Web has some really nice templates that were super instructive for me. If you open "File > New Page" it gives you several alternatives. one type is "CSS layouts". This lays out several typical web page designs for you with all the named divs and CSS positioning in place. From there you can cobble together how to handle most any scenario. It's really economically written CSS, a nice learning tool.
If I had to pick out a couple quick hits,
1. I would say that it's important to arrange your page markup so that divs that are going to float:left; & float:right; come first in the flow.
2. It's also important to make your container div position:relative while any divs inside this should be position:absolute, and typically with fixed widths. I have to research this a bit more to understand it exactly, but it enables a nice positioning capability.
a couple of nice links I found,
http://www.autisticcuckoo.net/archive.php?id=2004/12/07/relatively-absolute
http://www.barelyfitz.com/screencast/html-training/css/positioning/
and of course, the ubiquitous
http://www.csszengarden.com/
more to come on this. I think CSS will continue to be an interest for quite some time...
The point of the post then is how to get some of this stuff into your brain. Expression Web has some really nice templates that were super instructive for me. If you open "File > New Page" it gives you several alternatives. one type is "CSS layouts". This lays out several typical web page designs for you with all the named divs and CSS positioning in place. From there you can cobble together how to handle most any scenario. It's really economically written CSS, a nice learning tool.
If I had to pick out a couple quick hits,
1. I would say that it's important to arrange your page markup so that divs that are going to float:left; & float:right; come first in the flow.
2. It's also important to make your container div position:relative while any divs inside this should be position:absolute, and typically with fixed widths. I have to research this a bit more to understand it exactly, but it enables a nice positioning capability.
a couple of nice links I found,
http://www.autisticcuckoo.net/archive.php?id=2004/12/07/relatively-absolute
http://www.barelyfitz.com/screencast/html-training/css/positioning/
and of course, the ubiquitous
http://www.csszengarden.com/
more to come on this. I think CSS will continue to be an interest for quite some time...
Thursday, June 12, 2008
First Post & Preview
I've decided to start a blog to start keeping track of answers to web development questions that I have so that I can recall them later on or refer people to posts.
some key things I've been researching recently that I plan to write up in future posts are:
1. .CSS file authoring best practices
2. absolute vs relative positioning of elements
3. centering content in the browser with CSS
4. float element
5. wiring up asp.net SqlMembershipProvider & SqlRoleProvider
6. state & country codes in an application
7. LINQ
some other things I'll post on as I get into them are
1. Wiring up roles & membership widgets in a real application
2. Assorted Silverlight & XAML topics
3. ADO.NET Entity Framework
3. ADO.NET Data Services
I feel an enormous clarity right now, both personally and professionally. After years of just wandering from one app to another & from one technology to the next, I finally think I see all the pieces I need to understand in order to do the type of development I really, truly want to do. Along with technical posts I will try to also try to jot down some of my thoughts & motivations along the way too, so that hopefully all my musings will have a bit of context & backdrop.
some key things I've been researching recently that I plan to write up in future posts are:
1. .CSS file authoring best practices
2. absolute vs relative positioning of elements
3. centering content in the browser with CSS
4. float element
5. wiring up asp.net SqlMembershipProvider & SqlRoleProvider
6. state & country codes in an application
7. LINQ
some other things I'll post on as I get into them are
1. Wiring up roles & membership widgets in a real application
2. Assorted Silverlight & XAML topics
3. ADO.NET Entity Framework
3. ADO.NET Data Services
I feel an enormous clarity right now, both personally and professionally. After years of just wandering from one app to another & from one technology to the next, I finally think I see all the pieces I need to understand in order to do the type of development I really, truly want to do. Along with technical posts I will try to also try to jot down some of my thoughts & motivations along the way too, so that hopefully all my musings will have a bit of context & backdrop.
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