Differences between Web Site Project and Web Application Project

I have been working on both kinds of web projects since I started developing on ASP.Net. After manually migrating a Web Site into a Web Application Project, I now understand the differences:

Topic	Web Site	Web Application
Project Files	All files in and below the project directory	All files added to the .csproj project file
MasterPage Reference	Add “Web Form” and check “Select master page”	Add “Web Content Form”
Assembly Namespace	Global namespace	Namespace as defined in project
Generated assemblies	Code in the App_Code directory compiles into a single assembly. Code from code-behind files compile into various assemblies named App_Web_*.dll. Assemblies can be merged using aspnet_merge.	Compiles into single assembly
Code Restrictions	Since code-behind is generated into randomly named assemblies, code in one page or control almost certainly cannot reference any other page or control. (Work-around: extract to base class or interface inside App_Code)	Code under the App_Code directory is ignored. (Solution: rename App_Code directory)
Complete build	Build from command line using aspnet_compiler	Add aspnet_compiler as Post-build Event
Publish	Publish from command line using aspnet_compiler and aspnet_merge	Publish from command line using msbuild /property:OutDir=(path)
Published files	Contents of aspx and ashx files is replaced by the text “This is a marker file generated by the precompilation tool, and should not be deleted!”. The Bin directory contains a (filename).(8hexdigits).compiled file for each compiled markup file listing the original dependencies.	Original aspx, ascx, master files remain. ashx files refer to their implementation class.

New Version of wpxslgui

wpxslgui is a Windows application which converts an XML File generated by the WordPress Export function into an HTML or Word HTML document.

Due to an undeclared element (namespace) in the file generated by WordPress, the application caused an exception and required manually editing the XML file to remove these elements. (see technical details here)

This bug has been fixed now, and the new version of wpxslgui can be download here.

Export your WordPress blog to XML, and convert into any of the supported output formats.

XSLT Transformations on XML Files with Undeclared Namespaces

To perform an XSLT transformation, you just need a couple of lines in C#:

XslCompiledTransform xslt = new XslCompiledTransform();
xslt.Load(XsltFilename);
xslt.Transform(XmlInputFilename, XmlOutputFilename);

By the way, the PowerShell version of this code snippet is here.

This code works fine unless the XML file contains elements with undeclared namespaces.

While working on wpxslgui, I noticed that newer versions of the WordPress XML export format included the atom: namespace without declaring it:

<atom:link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="http://devio.wordpress.com/osd.xml" title="devioblog" />
<atom:link rel='hub' href='http://devio.wordpress.com/?pushpress=hub'/>

In case you ever tried my app on an XML file containing these elements, you get the error message

System.Xml.XmlException: ‘atom’ is an undeclared namespace

To fix the problem, you need to open the XML file in an editor, navigate to the line given in the error message, and delete the lines starting with the <atom:link element. Done

Of course, programmers love programming, and finding solutions. We need to declare the namespace before opening (and parsing) the XML file, and this is achieved by using an XmlReader containing the namespace declaration:

XslCompiledTransform xslt = new XslCompiledTransform();
xslt.Load(XsltFilename);

// prepare XML input
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(XmlInputFilename, System.Text.Encoding.Default);
NameTable nt = new NameTable();
XmlNamespaceManager mgr = new XmlNamespaceManager(nt);
mgr.AddNamespace("atom", "urn:atom");
XmlParserContext xpc = new XmlParserContext(nt, mgr, "", XmlSpace.Default);
XmlReaderSettings rds = new XmlReaderSettings();
rds.ConformanceLevel = ConformanceLevel.Document;
XmlReader rd = XmlReader.Create(sr, rds, xpc);

// prepare transformation
StreamWriter wr = new StreamWriter(XmlOutputFilename);
xslt.Transform(rd, new XsltArgumentList(), wr);

// cleanup
wr.Flush();
wr.Close();
rd.Close();

[The code does not contain exception handling (file not found, file system permissions, etc) for clarity]

Get Property Name as String Value

If you use an ORM (such as EF or NHibernate), you end up with classes for each mapped table, and its fields mapped to properties:

public class Foo
{
  public int FooID { get; set; }
  public string Name { get; set; }
}

To get the name of each property as a string, use the following generic method:

public class Tools
{
  public static string GetPropertyName<P, T>(Expression<Func<P, T>> expression)
  {
    MemberExpression memberExpression = (MemberExpression)expression.Body;
    return memberExpression.Member.Name;
  }
}

If you call this method explicitly, you need to pass the types of both the class and the property type in the invocation, e.g.:

Tools.GetPropertyName<Foo, string>(f => f.Name)

If you use a generic class declaring the data class, the compiler can infer the type of the property, and there is no need to provide both types:

public class Test<Class>
{
  public static string GetPropertyName<T>(Expression<Func<Class, T>> Field)
  {
    return Tools.GetPropertyName(Field);
  }
}

Test<Foo>.GetPropertyName( f => f.Name );

Sometimes (*) the compiler includes a Convert function into the expression tree to convert between the original and target data type of the property. We can extend the GetPropertyName() function to take care of the Convert function:

public static string GetPropertyName<P, T>(Expression<Func<P, T>> expression)
{
  if (expression.Body is UnaryExpression)
  {
    UnaryExpression unex = (UnaryExpression)expression.Body;
    if (unex.NodeType == ExpressionType.Convert)
    {
      Expression ex = unex.Operand;
      MemberExpression mex = (MemberExpression)ex;
      return mex.Member.Name;
    }
  }

  MemberExpression memberExpression = (MemberExpression)expression.Body;
  return memberExpression.Member.Name;
}

(*) I met this condition when dealing with overloaded generic methods, and the C# compiler could not infer the correct method from the property types given as parameters.

Firefox and Integrated Windows Authentication

• In the Firefox address bar, type “about:config”
• Filter to “network.automatic”
• Edit the setting “network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris” to include the web site requiring Windows Authentication.

Found this solution here and here.

One hundred and fifty thousand!

Hits!!

Ah yes, and spam comments reaching the 10.000 mark

As they say…

UPDATE and DELETE with JOINed Tables in Oracle

MS SQL Server allows UPDATE and DELETE statements to include a FROM … INNER JOIN … clause in the form

UPDATE Foo
SET blah = 1
FROM Foo INNER JOIN Bar ON Foo.ID = Bar.FooID
...

This syntax is not supported in Oracle databases. I found this blog which offers a different approach by updating a JOINed subselect:

UPDATE (SELECT blah FROM Foo INNER JOIN Bar ON Foo.ID = Bar.FooID
SET blah = 1

I found, however, that you need to have UPDATE grants on all joined tables or views. In my case, I needed to copy data from the meta-model views, such as USER_TAB_COLUMNS, which understandably do not allow updates.

The other solution I found was to retrieve the updating values via a subselect, such as:

UPDATE Foo
SET blah = (SELECT Bar.blah FROM Bar WHERE Foo.ID = Bar.FooID)

requiring a single-record result set for each of the updated records, and a subselect for each column.

The case of DELETing records based on a JOINed expression can be dealt with subselects, or the WHERE (…) IN (SELECT …) clause:

DELETE Foo
WHERE Foo.ID = (SELECT FooID FROM Bar ...)

or

DELETE Foo
WHERE ID IN (SELECT FooID FROM Bar...)

or

DELETE Foo
WHERE (ID, ID2) IN (SELECT FooID, FooID2 FROM Bar...)

Integrated Database Versioning and Documentation with dbscript 1.02

dbscript 1.02 adds support for edmx-based projects. If have previously written about generating documentation out of edmx files, and these documentation generators are now part of dbscript.

This is the updated table of Documentation Generators in dbscript 1.02:

Generated Documentation

	MS SQL Server	Oracle	PostgreSql	edmx
dbscript HTML	view	view	view
dbscript Single HTML	view	view	view	view view
HTML (single file)	view	view	view	view view
MediaWiki	view	view	view	view view
ScrewTurn Wiki (V2)	view	view	view
ScrewTurn Wiki (V3)	view	view	view
Word HTML	view	view	view	view view

The XSLT files on which the Documentation Generators depend for their functionality are now computed by a separate tool I wrote for this purpose, making the generated documentation more consistent throughout the different formats and databases.

Developers are free to adjust the shipped XSLT style sheets according to their layout and content needs.

Other features

• Data diagrams can now be restricted to a certain Object Selection resulting in a diagram showing only a part of the full model.
• Update notifications are implemented via JSONP
• Some fixes

dbscript is available for download here.

Selecting all Session Parameters from Oracle SYS_CONTEXT

Oracle databases provide the function SYS_CONTEXT which allow you to retrieve a set of session parameters via the namespace parameter ‘USERENV’. I created a SELECT statement to retrieve all the parameter values, text description is taken from this page at TECH on the Net:

SELECT 'AUDITED_CURSORID' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','AUDITED_CURSORID') AS Value, 'Returns the cursor ID of the SQL that triggered the audit' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'AUTHENTICATION_DATA' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','AUTHENTICATION_DATA') AS Value, 'Authentication data' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'AUTHENTICATION_TYPE' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','AUTHENTICATION_TYPE') AS Value, 'Describes how the user was authenticated. Can be one of the following values: Database, OS, Network, or Proxy' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'BG_JOB_ID' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','BG_JOB_ID') AS Value, 'If the session was established by an Oracle background process, this parameter will return the Job ID. Otherwise, it will return NULL.' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'CLIENT_IDENTIFIER' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','CLIENT_IDENTIFIER') AS Value, 'Returns the client identifier (global context)' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'CLIENT_INFO' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','CLIENT_INFO') AS Value, 'User session information' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'CURRENT_SCHEMA' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','CURRENT_SCHEMA') AS Value, 'Returns the default schema used in the current schema' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'CURRENT_SCHEMAID' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','CURRENT_SCHEMAID') AS Value, 'Returns the identifier of the default schema used in the current schema' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'CURRENT_SQL' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','CURRENT_SQL') AS Value, 'Returns the SQL that triggered the audit event' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'CURRENT_USER' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','CURRENT_USER') AS Value, 'Name of the current user' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'CURRENT_USERID' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','CURRENT_USERID') AS Value, 'Userid of the current user' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'DB_DOMAIN' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','DB_DOMAIN') AS Value, 'Domain of the database from the DB_DOMAIN initialization parameter' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'DB_NAME' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','DB_NAME') AS Value, 'Name of the database from the DB_NAME initialization parameter' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'ENTRYID' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','ENTRYID') AS Value, 'Available auditing entry identifier' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'EXTERNAL_NAME' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','EXTERNAL_NAME') AS Value, 'External of the database user' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'FG_JOB_ID' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','FG_JOB_ID') AS Value, 'If the session was established by a client foreground process, this parameter will return the Job ID. Otherwise, it will return NULL.' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'GLOBAL_CONTEXT_MEMORY' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','GLOBAL_CONTEXT_MEMORY') AS Value, 'The number used in the System Global Area by the globally accessed context' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'HOST' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','HOST') AS Value, 'Name of the host machine from which the client has connected' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'INSTANCE' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','INSTANCE') AS Value, 'The identifier number of the current instance' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'IP_ADDRESS' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','IP_ADDRESS') AS Value, 'IP address of the machine from which the client has connected' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'ISDBA' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','ISDBA') AS Value, 'Returns TRUE if the user has DBA privileges. Otherwise, it will return FALSE.' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'LANG' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','LANG') AS Value, 'The ISO abbreviate for the language' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'LANGUAGE' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','LANGUAGE') AS Value, 'The language, territory, and character of the session. In the following format:language_territory.characterset' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'NETWORK_PROTOCOL' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','NETWORK_PROTOCOL') AS Value, 'Network protocol used' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'NLS_CALENDAR' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','NLS_CALENDAR') AS Value, 'The calendar of the current session' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'NLS_CURRENCY' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','NLS_CURRENCY') AS Value, 'The currency of the current session' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'NLS_DATE_FORMAT' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','NLS_DATE_FORMAT') AS Value, 'The date format for the current session' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE') AS Value, 'The language used for dates' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'NLS_SORT' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','NLS_SORT') AS Value, 'BINARY or the linguistic sort basis' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'NLS_TERRITORY' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','NLS_TERRITORY') AS Value, 'The territory of the current session' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'OS_USER' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','OS_USER') AS Value, 'The OS username for the user logged in' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'PROXY_USER' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','PROXY_USER') AS Value, 'The name of the user who opened the current session on behalf of SESSION_USER' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'PROXY_USERID' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','PROXY_USERID') AS Value, 'The identifier of the user who opened the current session on behalf of SESSION_USER' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'SESSION_USER' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','SESSION_USER') AS Value, 'The database user name of the user logged in' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'SESSION_USERID' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','SESSION_USERID') AS Value, 'The database identifier of the user logged in' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'SESSIONID' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','SESSIONID') AS Value, 'The identifier of the auditing session' AS Description FROM Dual
UNION ALL 
SELECT 'TERMINAL' AS Parameter, SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV','TERMINAL') AS Value, 'The OS identifier of the current session' AS Description FROM Dual

Copy and paste into SQL Developer and execute

Executing Oracle Stored Procedures using Entity Framework

In a previous post I discussed an XSLT file which generates code to execute Stored Procedures on an SQL Server database using Entity Framework.

DataDirect produces an Entity Framework provider for Oracle databases, and I found that the same XSLT file also works for edmx files generated by DataDirect. The only difference I found was that output parameters are declared as

@Mode=”InOut”

in SQL Server, but as

@Mode=”Out”

in Oracle. Therefore, some adjustments to the file are necessary.

In the first for-each statement on edm:Parameter

 <xsl:if test="position() != 1">, </xsl:if>
 <xsl:if test="@Mode = 'InOut' or @Mode = 'Out'">out </xsl:if>

in the second statement

 par.DbType = System.Data.DbType.<xsl:value-of select="@Type" />;<xsl:if test="@Mode = 'InOut'">
 par.Direction = System.Data.ParameterDirection.InputOutput;
 </xsl:if><xsl:if test="@Mode = 'Out'">
 par.Direction = System.Data.ParameterDirection.Output;</xsl:if>
 <xsl:if test="@Mode != 'InOut' and @Mode != 'Out'">

and

 <xsl:if test="@Mode = 'InOut' or @Mode = 'Out'">
 par.Value = System.DBNull.Value;
 </xsl:if>

in the third statement

<xsl:if test="@Mode = 'InOut' or @Mode = 'Out'">

Modify the original XSLT in Visual Studio, select your edmx file as Input File, and execute.