While trying to do some code-behind manipulation of a page I had trouble accessing the controls contained by an UpdateProgress control.  On the same page I have an UpdatePanel and I'm able to use FindControl() to locate controls contained by it in the CreateChildControls event (or any other event for that matter). Not so with the UpdateProgress control!  No matter what I tried the UpdateProgress control would not find any controls.

I finally stumbled upon a tip that you needed to do this in the page's PreRenderComplete event.  Like this:

void Page_PreRenderComplete( object sender, EventArgs e )
{
                Image ImageProgress = (Image)UpdateProgress1.FindControl( "ImageProgress" );
          & ...

I recently got an unusual ODBC error after I set up a system DSN for an ASP.Net application.

ERROR [IM003] Specified driver could not be loaded due to system error 5

Simple fix: make sure that the account which ASP.Net is running under has permissions to read from the directory where the ODBC driver is located.  Doh!

Using extended/custom properties in LLBLGEN Pro is a bit confusing.  Here are some tips which I hope will save you time.

To view custom properties on an entity, right-click the entity  name in the project explorer and choose "Edit/Properties".  Choose the Code Gen. Options tab and then the Custom Properties tab.

To view custom properties on a entity field, right-click the entity  name in the project explorer and choose "Edit/Properties".  Choose the Entity Fields tab, select the field from the list of Mapped Entity Fields, then choose the Custom Properties tab.

By default LLBLGen does not import your custom properties which you define on fields or tables.  To enable this, go to the preferences screen and change the value of RetrieveDBCustomProperties to true.  When this value is false, LLBLGEN will not retrieve custom properties, even if you ch ...

My dev server is a Win 2003 machine with IIS 6.0.  I've got a number of web sites set up which I reference via URLs such as http://site1.localhost, http://site2.localhost, etc.  By putting entries in my HOSTS file which point back to 127.0.0.1, I can use those URLs to access the sites because I set up Host Headers for each site to look for its specific URL.

After installing VS 2008, I suddenly lost the ability to debug web applications on my local machine.  I had been using VS 2005 successfully before that.

"Unable to start debugging on the web server. An authentication error occurred while communicating with the web server."

I did a lot of fruitless searching on the web.  None of the solutions worked: Integrated Windows Authentication must be ...

Another gotcha in Sql Server Analysis Services (SSAS) 2005 related to nullable foreign keys...

Let's say you have DimensionA which contains a foreign key to the related dimension DimensionB and that relationship is optional (nullable foreign key).  DimensionB is represented as AttributeB within DimensionA.

When I first created DimensionA and related it to my fact table, everything worked nicely.  I then decided to have the name column for AttributeB show the text value for DImensionB's key rather than they key itself.  I figured this would make things go more quickly when building reports. I used object binding on the NameColumn and set the source table and source column.  Suddenly I started getting the error "The attribute key cannot be found" when I tried to process the cube.  Huh?

I checked my source tables and of course the key did exist.&a ...

On a recent project using Sql Server Analysis Server (SSAS) 2005, I ran into some challenges with fact tables that had optional relationships (nullable foreign keys) to related dimension tables.

I used a design were FactTableA had a regular relationship to DimensionA and DimensionB, however, these were both optional relationships.  The cube functioned correctly until I added a referenced relationship to DimensionC via DimensionA.  When I did this, the count of records in FactTableA suddenly dropped to a value corresponding to the count of non-null values for the foreign key referencing DimensionA.  The cube was forming an inner join between FactTableA and DimensionC via DimensionA; not what I wanted at all.

The fix was simple, in the "Define Relationship" screen for DimensionC, I unchecked the "Materialize" checkbox. The documentation doesn't mention this impact on the dat ...

Here's how to make hanging indents for radiobuttonlists in ASP.Net!

You must choose RepeatLayout="Table" and then create styles to apply to that table.

[Test in IE7 and Firefox 2]

<style type="text/css">
    .rbChoice input { margin-left: -20px; }
    .rbChoice td { padding-left: 20px; }
</style> 

<asp:RadioButtonList
ID="RadioButtonListSessionChoice"
runat="server"
CssClass="rbChoice"
RepeatLayout="Table"
RepeatColumns="1"
/>

I love my iMac, I hate my iMac.

I've owned my iMac for about 2 years.  I use it for music and photos, mostly, and when it's not in use it makes a great picture frame for displaying my photos.

BUT

My LCD screen suddenly started devloping vertical lines just like these.

So, while I love my iMac - don't buy one unless you get the extended AppleCare warranty!

Here's an online petition to get Apple to correct this problem. (yeah right)