SQL Server Management Studio Intellisence not refreshing on schema change

When I have been adding tables, columns etc, I've noticed that the intellisense is not updated with in the query window. The intellisense is updated however if I shutdown the management studio and re-open it. This is quite an agressive and time consuming measure.

The problem it that objects are cached in the solution so to you have to refresh the local cache.

Edit  -> Intellisense -> Refresh Local Cache (CTRL+Shift+R)

txt2re: Regular Expression Generator

txt2re is a great tool that can help you a lot when creating regular expressions. Just type in an example string you want to match, then use the selectors to create a snippet of code with the regex and validation process pre-populated, allowing you to drop the code straight into your application. This supports many languages including some of the following

• perl
• php
• python
• java
• javascript
• ruby
• c#

I must give some credit to my colleague for his blog post and also the full credit to Zoe Nolan.

IIS PowerShell Module on Windows 7

I've just got round to installing the PowerShell Module for IIS 7. This was not a straightforward task.

I got some of the following errors:

Import-Module : File C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\WebAdministration\WebAdministrationAliases.ps1 cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see "get-help about_signing" for more details.


Import-Module : The following error occurred while loading the extended type data file: Microsoft.PowerShell, C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\WebAdministration\iisprovider.types.ps1xml : File skipped because it was already present from "Microsoft.PowerShell".

The following blog post was very helpful in getting this installed and working:
IIS Workstation: Troubleshooting: IIS Powershell Module on Windows 7 RC

Speeding up Visual Studio

Do you find that Visual Studio is not fast enough for you? There are several guides and options you can tweak to improve performance.

Improve your hardware

• 4Gb of RAM
• Dual or Quad core processor
• Solid State Drive(SSD) hard drive and install Visual studio and project files to this disk.

If this is not possible, try to tweak you visual experience.  One of the more comprehensive guides I found on this is here:
Ultimate Guide to speed up Visual Studio

Rogue VSMacro80 folder

I've just rebuilt my machine after a hard disk crash, so lost most of my Visual Studio settings. Since the rebuild I've noticed that a VSMacro80 folder is appearing in my projects folder.  Every time I deleted it, it always seemed to return.

The solution is to update your projects location path:
Visual Studio -> Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions

Ensure that the path ends in a trailing slash. e.g. c:\Projects\

HTML Agility Pack breaks XHTML

We have some HTML that contains the tag <br /> but when we parse this through the HTML Agility Pack to process the HTML, it converts it to <br>.

The solution to this the following:

var doc = new HtmlDocument();
HtmlNode.ElementsFlags["br"] = HtmlElementFlag.Empty;
doc.OptionWriteEmptyNodes = true;

doc.LoadHtml(html);
//process data
return doc.DocumentNode.OuterHtml;


More can be found on this StackOverflow post

Compression support not configured

A colleague and I were having to debug an issue with the Lucene search engine. When trying to index data we kept receiving the following error.

Compression support not configured

Further details and the solution is avaliable on my colleagues blog.

MCPD ASP.NET Developer 3.5

Yesterday I successfully passed the upgrade MCPD exam 70-567. Not a great pass mark, but still managed the pass. The result pays off for all that studying that had to been done.

Cannot resolve the collation conflict

I've been working recently on databases that contain different collations. Mainly the following two:

• SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
• Latin1_General_CI_AS

When trying to write simple queries I kept getting the following error:

Cannot resolve the collation conflict between "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS" and "Latin1_General_CI_AS" in the equal to operation.

To solve this you just need to cast the field to the correct collatiion using COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS

Example.


SELECT *
FROM Table1INNER JOIN Table2
ON Table1.ID = Table2.ID
WHERE Table1.ID = 1

This would become

SELECT *
FROM Table1INNER JOIN Table2
ON Table1.ID COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS = Table2.ID
WHERE Table1.ID = 1


Blank or Empty lists for Windows Features

I've seen this issue a few times where the "Turn Windows features on or off" window is empty, stopping you from installing or uninstalling a feature.

Microsoft's solution is to perform a "System Restore" which is quite a drastic action.

There is a more viable fix for this issue available here:
FIX Blank or Empty List in Vista Turn Windows Features On or Off (OptionalFeatures.exe)