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While extremely unrecommended, sometimes you just want to fix a problem quickly and without jumping through a ton of hoops using the SharePoint SDK and writing a small C# program. I recently encountered this when I needed to delete a Folder from a whole bunch of Document Libraries across hundreds of sites. Making sure that I checked to see if the folder was there first, calling the right Web, calling the right List, getting the right Folder GUID, etc. all seemed like a lot of work for a simple SQL statement so I cheated.

Folders all stored in the AllUserData table with a tp_ContentType = 'Folder'. I was able to write a simple UPDATE statement like the following to delete the unwanted folder across the sites I wanted -

Quick and very dirty. Not recommended, kids don't try this at home.

Today, at work, I was working on creating an application that would perform validated, bulk updates to our accounting system software (Deltek Vision). So, I create a very simple Windows Form, create a real quick GUI, write all the necessary validation and then started writing the stored procedures needed to perform each of the functions. I had already written the SQL syntax as before this application I was manually changing the variables to fit the needs of our business units. However, as I was trying to "generalize" the statements to allow for different types of queries, I started to run into a SQL problem. I was attempting to use dynamic cursors that were being fed by dynamic SQL statements. Yikes.

In English, I had created two cursors - one to read through all the "target" projects and one for all the "source" information. I also gave the user the ability to specify whether or not the target was "equal to", "starts with" or "ends with" a certain criteria. This causes a problem since if you know general cursor syntax you know that a cursor is fed with a select statement as such:

Now, by giving users the ability to dynamically change the entire WHERE clause (including the operator), you suddenly run into a syntax issue because you can't just store the entire clause in a varchar variable and then have it EXEC SQL (@stmt) because of later references to the cursor. Since that eliminates one major way of preparing dynamic SQL statements, I developed a very dirty solution that revolved around IF statements -

Pretty dirty right?

Most of the time when I post code here, it's generally the non-dirty version, but I really couldn't find a non-dirty version to this problem and would really like to see if someoone has any ideas on a better, cleaner solution. It seems that all of the sample code I saw online when searching "dynamic cursors" only made table names or WHERE criteria (not the operator) dynamic and therefore fails to appropriately address my issue. I got away with this solution since the problem was simplistic, but what about if I had to deal with 1000 conditions - I wouldn't want to write 1000 IF statements.

Thoughts?

P.S. - As I read through the SQL Books Online, it seems that the PREPARE statement might be able to solve this problem, but I don't have much experience with PREPARE.

Today, I started working on an application to perform bulk changes to our Deltek Vision database to change tasks, sub-tasks, budgets and billing terms. So, as I go to write the SQL connection string, something I have done 100s of times, I kept getting the following error from my app:

While the error is pretty descriptive, there is one slight problem - I'm not trying to access a 2005 SQL Server, but a SQL Server 2000 box. So, I do what any good programmer does - he searches the major search engines for a solution, but most of the examples are of users trying to 1) build a Web application and have a web.config error or 2) are actually trying to access a SQL Server 2005 database. Yikes, now what?

I can't stress this enough - check your connection string. I was actually passing a blank Data Source (I was using SelectedValue as opposed to SelectedItem) and since I have SQLExpress running on my development machine, I assume that's why I was generating a 2005 error when trying, in theory, to connect to a SQL 2000 machine. The lesson is - verify your connection string when getting this error and trying to access a SQL 2000 machine. If you're trying to access a SQL 2005 machine, follow the enabling remote connections info that you'll find on the hundreds of pages that come up in he search engines for this error.

When you're writing a development related blog, you're eventually (hopefully) going to write some code snippets that you want to share with your readers. However, in order to get the most out of that code snippet, you should make it easy to read and color coded so that potential users can quickly read through your code and evaluate its worth.

That's where CopySourceAsHTML will solve all your problems. CSAH is a plug-in that integrates directly into your Visual Studio IDE environment and allows you to highlight code, right click and choose "Copy As HTML". The tool is freeware and performs exceptionally - if you maintain a .Net developer blog, I would suggest installing this add-on.

Just a FYI to the 3 of you reading this site (Hi Mom and Dad!), I made an update to the Recreating the SharePoint Quick Launch story I posted back in February. I made some code fixes that were mainly introduced with the release of the 40 Free WSS Application Templates made by Microsoft.

Hope the bug fixes help!

Today, as I was converting some web applications from .Net 1.1 to .Net 2.0 I received the following error on the source pages of most of my ASPX pages -

Huh? That's what I said. However, the fix is relatively easy. What the error message is saying is that you probably have some element in your HTML code/script that has a value of "ID=Header". By giving this element a new ID name, the error message will be resolved.

When working with SharePoint v3 list data, it's important to understand the data structure used to store list items. List data is stored in the AllUserData table and the name should be your first indication that you might run into a problem if trying to pull or manipulate data stored in this table. Why? Well, "all" user data is stored in that table including deleted data and you will need to know how to filter out deleted items and that is where the tp_DeleteTransactionID column comes into focus.

The tp_DeleteTransactionID column is a varbinary field so you cannot readily read the contents of that column in SQL Server Enterprise Manager. This coulmn acts as a "deleted flag" and you will need to be able to know what items you have removed from your list, but you forgot to remove from your Recycle Bin. List items that you delete from your list, but that remain in your Recycle Bin will have the value of the tp_DeleteTransactionID column updated from the default value of 0x. Once you remove the items from your Recycle Bin, the item's corresponding rows will be deleted from the AllUserData, but until you do so those item's rows will remain in the AllUserData table.

So, if you want to filter out deleted content for the purpose of data manipulation or transformation, but you don't want to have to worry that the user has remembered to empty the Recycle Bin, add the following WHERE clause to your SQL statements -

Notice, that the value 0x is not surrounded by value defining apostrophes since the value is not a true string, numeric, date, etc. value, but a hex representation for the varbinary field.

Today, I encountered an error that I wasn't immediately sure how to fix while creating a new web part. After uploading the .DWP file to the web part gallery, I attempted to add the web part to a recently created web part page. Even though I had a Try/Catch/Finally wrapper around my code, I received a browser alert that had the following error:

After a very quick search for that error on Google's main search index and Google Groups, I found zero results. Then, I remembered that I didn't make the necessary corrections to the .DWP file - in particular, I left the Assembly field blank. After adding the correct assembly name, I saved the file, deleted the previously uploaded DWP file, re-uploaded the new DWP file and was able to successfuly add the web part. Success!

IBM has created yet another great tutorial this time covering how to read files using PHP. This tutorial covers such functions as fopen, fclose, feof, fgets, fread, readfile, fgetss fpassthru, fseek and fscanf. IBM masterfully breaks down each function and gives the reader a good idea what the best practice is in using each of the functions.

Hynek wrote a great article on MySQL replication and exactly how easy replication is to setup. I definitely enjoyed this article as I was only familiar with replication in MS SQL Server 2000 and 2005 and this article solves one more problem for database admins. Now, with stored procedures and replication introduced to MySQL, MySQL provides another database option for the corporate environment and for IT managers to avoid high priced licensing agreements.