We use Umbraco as our Content Management System.  Today, I had an error pop up, and I needed to debug it.  I found this useful tip.  Call your umbraco page and pass it this query string

?umbDebugShowTrace=true

It enables the tracing information that may, or may not help identify the problem.  In my case, not so much, but it's handy non-the-less.

How to Write to an Identity Field

We have an online application system for folks who are registering as an EMT or Paramedic.  We received a request from one of our clerks, to delete an application from our database.

Our database is Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

Turns out the record wasn't to be deleted anyway.  So I get yesterday's backup of the database, and go to insert the deleted rows.  I got an error saying that I can't insert into an identity column.

In order to properly restore the database, I needed to restore the ID.   After some searching, I found the solution.

Assuming that you are restoring a record to the foo table, the following fixes the problem

SET IDENTITY_INSERT dbo.foo ON
INSERT dbo.foo
(ID, Occurred, [Status])
 Values (1234,'2011-08-09 09:27:51.383','new');

SET IDENTITY_INSERT dbo.foo OFF

Our Office's HR  person wanted us to submit a vacation-use form to account for taking off early after working late earlier in the week.  For example, if I worked over two hours on Monday, and knocked-off two hours early on Tuesday, she wanted a vacation form to show why I wasn't at work for the two hours on Tuesday.

The problem is that our vacation-use form wasn't designed for such a thing, and I needed to modify it to fit this need.

Alas, some well-meaning soul had placed a password on the file that  prevented me from adding the extra category.

Since I didn't know who that well-meaning soul was, I went to the all-knowing Google.  I found this tip so helpful that I wanted to share it.

Thanks to James Welch at Jameswelch.com, I have the answer.

• Save the password-protected document in RTF.  
• Open the file using your favorite text editor.  
• Find the string {\*\passwordhash ########}, where the ######## represents the password hash.  (hint look for the passwordhash portion.)
• Remove the hash
• save the file

Now, when you open the file, you can remove the security without being prompted for a password.

More details can be located here

The Right Cred

I have a very long running update to a SQL database that I need to tame.  The problem is that the database to which this process writes is a production system, and the data just has to be there.  I need to make optimization changes and not have to worry about shutting down production if my efforts fail.

While the real answer is only downloading those records that have changed, I need to have a the database update fixed so we can use the data and so I can verify the correctness of the incremental approach when I finish.

I say all of that to say this.  I backed up the database using the

BACKUP DATABASE databasename TO DISK ='d:\sql\backup\databasename.bak'

I stored the backup on the network share, to free up the room on the server.  I attempted to restore the backup, to create a copy of the database, found that I couldn't do it.

It seems that the SQL Server services is running at local-only credentials.  The only way to restore the file is to copy the file to the local drives, or change the user that the service uses to a domain user.  You see, I assumed that since I was using the front end, it would be using my network credentials.  Not so.

So, I copied the file, and attempted to restore the file.  It didn't work.

Seems like I have to specify a new MDF file name for the restored file with a MOVE clause.

But, to use the MOVE clause, one must know what to move.  That's where this statement comes in.

RESTORE FILELISTONLY FROM DISK ='location of backup file' 

This command lists the logical and physical names of a database inside the backup file.

I combined all this knowledge to produce

RESTORE DATABASE newdatabasename
FROM DISK ='path to bak file'
WITH MOVE 'logical name of database' to 'path to the mdf file',
MOVE 'logical name of log file' to 'path to the ldf file' 

.

Text shadows

We should strive to learn everyday, especially in computers.  Just because you did something yesterday one way, doesn't mean that there isn't a better way to do it today.

Case in point is today and what I learned about text shadows.  Besides making text look more attractive, shadows can improve contrast and readability when using a text color that doesn't pop as well with the background as you would like.

 I was building a web page and wanted the colors of the headings to match the colors in the logo graphic.  The colors were blue and gold, and the gold header didn't pop against a egg-shell background.  I said "I need a drop shadow here."

In the past, I would have went to the GIMP (my favorite image editor.  It's free and very powerful.) and created a graphic with the text shadow.  But, I heard of a CSS property, text-shadow, that would do it. I tried it and it worked wonderfully.  Well, wonderfully in everything but IE.  But, since 54% of the desktop market runs IE, this will not do.

While nobody has ever accused Microsoft of being standards-compliant, they aren't slackers either.  There's usually a Microsoft-specific way of doing something when the compliant-specific way doesn't work.

And, of course, there is.  I found a really handy filter to use from Heygrady.com .  Please note:  it's not fast, so if your page is a bandwidth-hog, use the graphics method instead.

The code would be

h1{
text-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #000000;
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(direction=135, strength=2,color=000000);}

The great thing about this is that everybody but IE ignores the filter property, and IE ignores the text-shadow property.

Concatenate stings with nulls

I was pulling a report in SQL Server, and getting strange results.

 SELECT FIRSTNAME  + ' ' +
                 MIDDLENAMEORINITIAL + ' ' +
                 LASTNAME as ContactName,
                 EMAILADDRESS
FROM aTable

The result set had ContactName as null whenever any of the three fields were null.  Any field concatenated with a null will be null.  The way to fix that is to wrap a ISNULL function around the field like this.

 SELECT  ISNULL(FIRSTNAME,'') + ' ' +
                 ISNULL(MIDDLENAMEORINITIAL,'') + ' ' +
                 ISNULL(LASTNAME,'') as ContactName,
                 EMAILADDRESSS
FROM aTable

This works with no problem!