neil kilbride's blog

Recent Posts

• Cannot resolve the collation conflict T-SQL

  Posted: 17 Apr 2008 at 09:13 by Neil kilbride

  Cannot resolve the collation conflict between XXX and YYY in the equal to operation I recently got this whilst doing some SQL queries that involved joins between two fields with different (albeit very similar) collation types. To stop SQL server from screaming, you'll need to perform a sort of colla

• Use CSS not JavaScript for rollovers!

  Posted: 13 Apr 2008 at 15:08 by Neil kilbride

  Why use Javascript for your rollovers when simple CSS will do? I prefer CSS over Javascript because it degrades better in non-compatible browsers in comparison to JavaScript and it's so straight forward to implement in CSS, just take a peek below... CSS rollover example in action: Hidden Text CSS ro

• How to access the Call Stack C#

  Posted: 10 Apr 2008 at 10:52 by Neil kilbride

  As methods are called, information about them are placed on the call stack. The call stack is invaluable in development work for debugging problems, but it can also be useful in other situations (e.g. when logging for an entire app or library is processed by a logging utility in one location). .NET

• Configure log4net only once

  Posted: 04 Apr 2008 at 18:11 by Neil kilbride

  log4net is a great logging framework with powerful levels of flexibility. This flexibility can result in complexity when used in larger systems. One key point when using log4net in complex systems is to remember to configure the file to log to just once per process. The file to log to is configured

• Removing XmlDocument white space c#

  Posted: 03 Apr 2008 at 13:21 by Neil kilbride

  I've recently been working on matching certain API calls with XML data pulled from an XML file for testing purposes. I noticed there was a large amount of white space left in the XML when pulled from the resourced XML file; which is something I didn't want. I thought setting the XmlDocument.Preserve

• HttpHandler for all requests in ASP.Net on IIS

  Posted: 28 Mar 2008 at 11:42 by Neil kilbride

  Setting up a HttpHandler for handling ALL incoming requests is straight forward with .Net and IIS. Provided you've created your .Net HttpHandler project to sucessfully handle the requests, you need to do the two following tasks: 1) Ensure that the web.config references the HttpHandler you've created

• XSLT Transform in C# (a piece of cake)

  Posted: 26 Mar 2008 at 12:41 by Neil kilbride

  Whilst there are times when I'd rather be rubbing Dorset Naga chillies in my eyes, most days I'm glad I develop in C# on the .Net framework. Take today for example. I needed to look into manipulating XML via XSLT; a powerful transformation language for XML. I thought it would take a while, around 3

• I need some ReST

  Posted: 25 Mar 2008 at 17:02 by Neil kilbride

  Despite working hard on two newly released services (BlogIt and Voice SMS) for Esendex there is no time to stop and catch my breath; I've begun working on a completely new ReST API. With ReST (Representational State Transfer), the idea is that the services are comprised of resources (an item of inte

• DateTime format & globalization problems in ASP.Net

  Posted: 18 Mar 2008 at 11:46 by Neil kilbride

  Some problems cropped up recently on a project relating to datetime formats and globalisation. At first glance it seemed that it was related to en-US and en-GB datetime format conflicts. However, it was difficult to figure out why with the machine being setup in the English en-GB globalisation setti

• Log4net - problems logging from a web app

  Posted: 17 Mar 2008 at 11:38 by Neil kilbride

  There have been a couple of occasions when logging just won't work for me in a web application. This typically means that log4net is getting permission issues. The web application runs as a special user account on the web server called ASPNET (usually). This account has restricted permissions to pro

• SQL - Replace line breaks and other characters

  Posted: 15 Mar 2008 at 12:51 by Neil kilbride

  I'm not quite as proficient with SQL as I'd like, so when I stumble across little SQL gems I know I'll use again I like to note them down; what better a place to do that than my blog to share with the rest of the web :) This is a Transact SQL example, on how to replace a character on a select. The c

• Update your Blog by SMS wherever you are

  Posted: 12 Mar 2008 at 10:18 by Neil kilbride

  digg_url ='http://neilkilbride.blogspot.com/2008/03/update-your-blog-by-sms-wherever-you.html'; BlogIt is a new, free service mobile blogging service available to all new and existing Esendex users. Whether you are a personal blogger or professional journalist, BlogIt is the perfect tool for updatin

• Clear Concise HTTP Status Codes List

  Posted: 29 Feb 2008 at 15:03 by Neil kilbride

  I've recently been looking into ReST services, and needless to say you need to know your HTTP status codes. These are a set of standardised response codes given by web site servers on the Internet. The codes help identify the cause of the problem when a web page or other resource does not load prope

• Windows 2003 IIS returns 404 for ASP.Net pages

  Posted: 27 Feb 2008 at 13:31 by Neil kilbride

  Had an issue on one of our externally managed servers which wouldn't process any ASP.Net documents (aspx, asmx etc), but would just return a 404. However, it would happily return other files such as htm, txt, css. There was no web application logging, no logs in event viewer I had nothing to go on,

• ASP.Net Production Web Server Top Tip

  Posted: 20 Feb 2008 at 17:20 by Neil kilbride

  digg_url ='http://neilkilbride.blogspot.com/2008/02/aspnet-production-web-server-top-tip.html'; There are a number of things we want to ensure on our production servers: The debug attribute in the compilation element in the web.config should be false for all applications. This is mainly for performa

• Control name changes due to xhtmlConformance

  Posted: 20 Feb 2008 at 10:01 by Neil kilbride

  Another strange and unwanted ASP.Net problem cropped up today when we least needed it to. We had some code problems occurring on some servers, but the exact same code worked fine on other servers. The problem was related to some code that hadn't changed for a long time, and left the development team

• Split a text file with VBScript

  Posted: 15 Feb 2008 at 13:41 by Neil kilbride

  I had to split some text reports (csv format) that are read by colleagues in Excel just the other day. Excel can only read ~65k lines on one sheet, but the reports were ~100k lines - so I had to split the files in two. The reports are generated via script; so I decided to write another script to spl

• HTML Email Newsletter Top Tips

  Posted: 15 Feb 2008 at 12:16 by Neil kilbride

  digg_url ='http://neilkilbride.blogspot.com/2008/02/html-email-newsletter-top-tips.html'; Email newsletters are common place for advertising products, services and events. Considering it's uses, it is easy to understand why html newsletters are king; who wants to send plain text emails when we can s

• Finding a User Mac Address (Javascript)

  Posted: 07 Feb 2008 at 14:28 by Neil kilbride

  digg_url ='http://neilkilbride.blogspot.com/2008/02/finding-user-mac-address-javascript.html'; Unless a user is on an internal network, there is no way server-side (I know of) to retrieve the mac address of a user accessing a web page, simply because it isn't sent in the http headers for a request.

• Could not load file or assembly App_Web_XXX

  Posted: 01 Feb 2008 at 17:46 by Neil kilbride

  Came across a completely random exception today on a new web server: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'App_Web_XXX, Version=0.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. File name: 'App_Web_XXX, V

• Where are my IIS Logs?

  Posted: 30 Jan 2008 at 09:54 by Neil kilbride

  digg_url ='http://neilkilbride.blogspot.com/2008/01/where-are-my-iis-logs.html'; Although you may have bucket loads of logging taking place in your web applications/sites, you may still feel the need to make use of the IIS logs. Use the following steps to track down these hidden away log files: Open

• User is not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection

  Posted: 28 Jan 2008 at 17:33 by Neil kilbride

  Login failed for user 'username'. The user is not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection. This error had me scratching my head today for around 30 mins (mainly because I rarely setup SQL Server instances from scratch), and took me just 30 secs to fix. Basically the SQL server instance you a

• ASP.Net AJAX Not Working (Full page postback)

  Posted: 28 Jan 2008 at 09:11 by Neil kilbride

  The conversion process from VS 2003 to VS 2005 for web projects may result in strange behaviour when adding new client-side JavaScript to the project. For me this was evident when using ASP.Net AJAX UpdatePanel controls, which resulted in a page performing a full-page postback instead of a partial p

• JMI Earthing, Grounding and Lightning Protection Services

  Posted: 23 Jan 2008 at 00:08 by Neil kilbride

  JMI Earthing is a specialist leading provider of system designs in earthing / grounding, lightning protection, quality management and environmental management. JMI aims to delight customers with its provision of service. By harnessing the most effective technology and drawing from expertise in many

• Browser CSS Differences (IE6 IE7 Firefox)

  Posted: 22 Jan 2008 at 09:55 by Neil kilbride

  digg_url ='http://neilkilbride.blogspot.com/2008/01/browser-css-differences-ie6-ie7-firefox.html'; Typically the 3 major browsers used are Firefox, IE6 and IE7. Perhaps you thought they would behave the behave the same when rendering CSS in the browser window? If only life were that simple. Although