Have you seen my cookie?

I received a call from one of our partners telling me they can't log into the website.

Since today is Monday, my first inclination is "forgot password."  I checked my log, and I see the user has validated.

I've been having  problems with Internet Explorer for a few months along these lines.  The use logs in, yet forms authentication doesn't recognize them.  Using any other browser avoids the problem.

I've looked and looked, but haven't been able to find a solution, until today.

The problem is that when the user logs in, the system creates a session cookie, which holds the authentication ticket.  Without said cookie, the user can't look at protected content.

I found the solution.  By adding a single line to the web.config file,  the problem goes away.

     
       

What's the point?

The view from my building at work

Got asked an interesting question.  In a GPS longitude/latitude  measurement, how much resolution does each decimal give us?


Since each line of longitude is 68.71 Miles then

• each tenth represents 6.9 miles (or 36,279 feet)
• each hundredth represents .69 miles (or 36279 feet)
• each thousandths represents 362 feet (or .07 miles)
• each then thousandth represents 36.3 feet (or .0069 miles)

Pretty URLs

At work, we are moving to SQL 2008 from SQL 2000.  As part of the move I had to test our Umbraco website against the new server.

So, I copied the contents of our website to the test server, changed the connection strings to point to the new server, and loaded the page.

When clicking on any links, I get a 404 error.

After some investigation, I learned that the issue was with IIS.  Our website uses PrettyURLs.  So if you want the trauma section you would go to www.wvstecs/trauma

The problem is that going to that location was generating a 404, not found error.

The reason is that you have to configure IIS to handle this type of request.  There are two steps.

1. Make sure that you have configured Umbraco to do the pretty URLs by modifying the umbracoUseDirectoryUrls to true in web.cofig
2. Make sure you have added the aspnet_isapi.dll handler to your website (Inetmgr - Home Directory tab, Configuration)

More informaton can be found here.

http://our.umbraco.org/wiki/install-and-setup/setting-up-umbraco-for-friendly-urls

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' 

.