Search results matching tag 'tips and tricks'

Tip#97: Did you know… How to Display Hidden Information in Design View

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:20:01 GMT

The design view in Visual Studio can display glyphs and borders for the hidden non - graphic elements (such as div, span, form, and script elements). This feature helps you to see where the elements are and avoid inadvertently deleting the non-graphic elements from your page while editing.

To enable it in designer click on View -> Formatting Marks -> Show

Now you will start seeing the hidden elements on the designer surface.

Hope this helps,

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip#96: Did you know…You could publish your SQL databases using the SQL Publishing Wizard?

Anonymous — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:05:51 GMT

You can use the SQL Publishing wizard in VS 2008/VWD 2008 to deploy a local database from your development machine to a hosting environment on a remote machine.

This is how you will accomplish this:

Step 1: Create a new web site by selecting menu File ->New Web Site. Switch to Server Explorer and add a new Data connection and connect to a database. In this case we will use the Northwind database that comes with SQL Express. You should point to the database you want to publish.

Step 2: Select Northwind.dbo node in Server explorer and right click to bring up the context menu. In the Context menu you have a “Publish to provider…” option.

Step 3: Click “Publish to provider …” to launch the Database Publishing Wizard.

Step 4: Click Next to select the mode. Let us go with “Script to file” mode. We will need to specify the .SQL file name and location.

Step 5: Click Next and you will get to the Publishing Options. On this page, select the script for target database (SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005) and the types of data to publish (Schema, Data or Schema+Data). You also have the option to drop existing object in script if you want to.

Step 6: Keep the default selection and hit next and generate the .SQL script.

Step 7: The .SQL file generated contains a script that you can run on any SQL server to re-create all the tables, sprocs, views, triggers, full-text catalogs, etc. for a database, as well as import and add all of the table row data that was in the database at the time the .SQL file was created.

Step 8: The .SQL file is a plain text file. You can open it in your favorite editor and customize it as you need.

Step 9: Now that we have our .SQL files, we can go about using them to install our database at our hoster. Exactly how to install the .SQL files will vary depending on how the hoster give access to our SQL account. Some hosters provide an HTML based file-upload tool that allows you to provide a .SQL file - which they will then execute against the SQL database you own.

Other hosters provide an online query tool (like below) that allows you to copy/paste SQL statements to run against your database. If you have a hoster which provides an online query tool like this, then you can open the .SQL file with a text-editor and copy/paste the contents into the query textbox and run it.

You can find my original post here.

Reshmi Mangalore
SDET, Visual Web Developer.

Tip #95: Did you know… That Web Application Projects and Class libraries are now available in Express edition?

Anonymous — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:27:39 GMT

Creating a Web Application Project was possible only in VS standard SKU and above in VS 2008.

But with VS 2008 SP1 we went ahead and added support for WAP and class libraries in Visual Web Developer Express edition SP1. You can now create WAPs by going to File –> New Project.

Reshmi Mangalore
SDET, Visual Web Developer.

Tip #92: Did you know … How to select a master page using 'Select a Master Page' dialog?

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:02:20 GMT

Master page for a Web form can always be set manually in the source code, but here is an option to select the master page while create the webform using the 'Select a Master Page' dialog.

The path to select a Master page using the 'Select a master page' dialog is different for a Web application project than for a Web site.

For a Web Application project:

Right click solution explore. Select Add and then select New Item
From the Add new Item dialog select Web content form and click on Add button.
Select a Master Page dialog would appear. Navigate thru the project folders to select the Master page & click on OK button. The aspx added would now be using the selected master page.

For a Web site project:

While adding a Webform, check the select master page checkbox and click on the Add button.
Select a Master Page dialog would appear. Navigate thru the project folders to select the Master page & click on OK button. The aspx added would now be using the selected master page.

Hope this helps,

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Who is my IIS application process identity?

davcox — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:03:00 GMT

Over the versions of IIS, we have changed our process model in some ways with each release. Each of those changes required administrators to change the way they set up permissions for "code" to run properly on IIS. It also requires application developers to be aware of these changes.

Let's skip ASP.net for this blog post (that code has it's own process model and identity configuration), and instead focus on how IIS itself will run script-mapped code and ISAPI filters and extensions. Let's also ignore the fact that you can configure the process identity for each of these process models; let's just talk about the default's and what most folks are experiencing.

In IIS 5.x, we had a "COM" based process model; and you basically had "In process", "out of process" and "pooled process" options for "where" you wanted your code to run and in fact that is where much of the server would run as well. These processes would typically run as the "IWAM_{computername}" user, or they would run as LocalSystem (terrible!) So, let's break this down further:

"In Process" applications - LocalSystem (in the inetinfo.exe process)

This was fast, but unreliable, since some bad code could take out your whole server

"Pooled or Out-of-Proc" applications - IWAM_{computername} (in the dllhost.exe processes)

This was more reliable, but slower (because of cross-process communication)

In IIS 6.0, you could optionally run in the IIS5.0 process model (if you selected the Run WWW service in IIS 5.0 isolation mode option in the UI), or better, you can run in the new process model called a worker process model. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc778754(WS.10).aspx

If you used the IIS 5.0 Isolation mode, then we would use the IWAM_{computername} account, similar to IIS 5.x implementations.
If you used worker processes, they would by default run as NetworkService; which is a built-in account. You could select other users if you wanted, per Application Pool.

To make this slightly more complicated, we added a group called the IIS_WPG group that was supposed to make it easy to set permissions for all "process identity" level items broadly. NetworkService and any custom process identities were suppossed to be part of this group. These links are super helpful in IIS 6.0 scenarios:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/12a3d96c-65ea-4210-96ad-86a801f6a88c.mspx?mfr=true
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/3648346f-e4f5-474b-86c7-5a86e85fa1ff.mspx?mfr=true

In IIS 7.0, we retained the IIS 6.0 process model, but we made several tweaks to how you provide permissions to these processes. You can still use the NetworkService account, but instead of the IIS_WPG group, we have the IIS_IUSRS group which is a built-in group and IIS automatically adds whatever specific user you've configured your process identity as to this group. This article covers a lot of it in detail: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/140/understanding-the-built-in-user-and-group-accounts-in-iis-70/

In addition (although not directly affecting most customers), Windows gave us the concept of a "Service SID" so we could lock down further what our w3wp.exe process could do; this should give you a warm fuzzy feeling about the improved security of Windows Server 2008.

In IIS 7.5, everything is the same as IIS 7.0, except that the default process identity is no longer NetworkService, but is a special "user" that is created on the fly ... we call it the "AppPool identity" ... we create a user named with the name of the AppPool (so for Default App Pool, we use a DefaultAppPool user) and make it part of the built-in group IIS_IUSRS group and everything is happy. This is not a "real" user though, some tools may have difficulty referencing this user (but I won't go into it). We also added other optional identities for your application pools such as "Managed Service Account" which is a domain-based user that doesn't require password resets ... a nice way to keep a long-running process alive but still use a domain account without any management costs.

Finally, when you reference "built-in" accounts, you need to reference them as BUILTIN\UserAccount instead of MACHINENAME\UserAccount. You would have used MACHINENAME with the IUSR_{computername} that IIS 5.x (and IIS 6 in compat mode) was creating at setup time, but with IIS 6 worker process mode and forward, you'll use the BUILTIN naming convention since these accounts I've referenced are built-in and not simply local.

Back to our original question, what part of our code runs as this "process identity" and which code runs as the "authenticated or anonymous user"? This is not a simple answer; but in short, if you're accessing a resource on disk, then both identities will need READ access to that file. In some cases, such as with static files, there's no "user" code involved, so IIS is impersonating the authenticated/anonymous user for most of the time (all the time that matters for this exercise). If you have script-mapped content, you need both users to have access and expect that resources used by your scripts (ASP/asp.net/PHP) to need to allow both identities to have READ access (and write where it's needed - but be careful!). I would have to write a very large post to talk about which code is run by which user; they are very intertwined; but we're always more conservative in our AccessCheck calls.

Here are some example links that deal with the complexity this has caused some folks:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297519
http://www.dotnet-guide.com/impersonation.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/RandomStuff/IIS6.0startsusingIWAMacco.html
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918041

Hope that helps, if you have questions on this, I'd love to help clarify this for you.

Dave

Who is the anonymous user?!

davcox — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:46:00 GMT

Many questions that we get on the forum's are around which users need which permissions for what resources ... isn't that how life goes? :)

Anyways, to make this more complicated, we have changed "who" the "anonymous" user is in different versions of IIS. We did this to make migration easier and to make configuration less machine dependent. Also, the Web Deployment Tool will handle many of the migration difficulties that would arise from these changes (be thankful!) ... you can find Web Deploy here: http://www.iis.net/extensions/WebDeploymentTool

So let's walk through who the anonymous user has been and how they have changed.

First, what is the anonymous user? This is the Windows user context that IIS impersonates when anonymous HTTP requests come into the web server. Now, you can configure the "anonymous" user to be a specific Windows user, but I'll ignore that scenario for now, let's just talk about the default's.

IIS 5.x & IIS 6.0 - the anonymous user was the IUSR_{computername} user ... this user was created when you install IIS and it had the computername appended to it; now in IIS 6.0 we added a permission that would explicitly DENY this user Write access to content (lots of viruses are potentially thwarted this way!) - see here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/9ded7af2-fcb7-4ed2-b007-e19f971f6e13.mspx?mfr=true and here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa292114(VS.71).aspx (this also talks about how IIS control's the password for this user - a sometimes problematic issue)

IIS 7.0 - the anonymous user is now IUSR always the same and just a simple name, this article goes into greater detail about this change: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/140/understanding-the-built-in-user-and-group-accounts-in-iis-70/
Since this account is now built into Windows, IIS no longer needs to control the password - (it doesn't really have a password)

I hope that helps clarify how the anonymous user has changed over time. Next post is how the "process account" has changed over time.

Dave

Tip #90: Did you know … How to rearrange menu items in Visual Web Developer?

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 05:36:19 GMT

You can use the Rearrange Commands dialog box to do this. To get there:

Launch the Tools->Customize dialog. Now select the Commands Tab.

Click on the Rearrange commands… button, and this will launch the dialog that will help you with arranging your menu and toolbar items. Now choose a menu or toolbar to rearrange. You can rearrange the items by selecting them and moving them up and down. You can also use this dialog to add your own menu options.

Rearrange Commands Dialog:

Reshmi Mangalore,

SDET, Visual Web Developer.

Tip #86: Did you know… Visual Studio has several different search options?

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:24:00 GMT

The standard methods for searching can be found under the Edit --> Find and Replace menu.

The “Quick Find” method (Ctrl+F) allows users to search inside of the current document, all open documents, the current project, the entire solution, and the current block by changing the Look in selection.

If you set Look in to be the current project or the entire solution, Visual studio will open files that have matches as you navigate between matches.

You can also adjust the settings under Find options to make the searches more specific by having them match on case or whole words or control how it searches by deciding whether it should search up or down or if it should look at hidden text (collapsed regions).

The Find in Files method (Ctrl+Shift+F) allows users to see all the occurrences of the search in one place, changes the Look in options by removing the current block, but allows users to search custom locations by using the “…” button next to the Look in drop down, and allows the user to restrict the types of files searched.

If you use Ctrl+F or select the Quick Find option from the find and replace menu by mistake, hitting Ctrl+Shift+F or selecting the drop down in the upper left corner of the dialog and selecting Find In Files will quickly get you to the Find in Files dialog.

Using the Result options section you choose to have the results displayed in either the “Find Results 1” or “Find results 2” window. Allowing you to switch between results if needed.

The Find What field also keeps a history of searches. To access this history click the down arrow of the Find What field. You can avoid using the history or typing search terms by having the value you want to search for selected in the editor before opening one of the find dialogs.

Ben Byrd
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip#85: Did you know… You can now do Multiple Selection of controls in your Designer with VS 2008 SP1?

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:15:45 GMT

Visual Web developer 2008 SP1 supports multiple selection of controls on your designer using Ctrl+Click.

You can see that the designer:

Displays the primary selected control with a white tab. Button3 in the image below.
Enable you to set property for the selected controls using Property Grid. Note that the property grid would show you only the properties that are in common for all the selected controls.
Enables you to make use of the Align, Make Same Size and Order Menu commands in your Format Menu options.

However VWD 2008 SP1 does not support the ability to drag drop multiple controls and Cut/Copy/Paste of multiple elements.

Thanks!

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Visual Web Developer

Tip #84: Did you know… How to set a Start page for your Web Site in Visual Web Developer?

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:49:00 GMT

As you are developing your site, you may want to start at a particular page for testing your web site. By defaults, when you start debugging, Visual Studio runs the page that was currently in focus in your designer.

If you set this page, Visual web Developer will start your web site with the Set Page and not the current page in designer.

You can do this by right-click on the page and selecting Set As Start Page option from the context menu.

This could also be set in Properties page under the Start Options tab as shown below.

Enjoy!

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Visual Web Developer