Change database owner

We need to install all databases with the owner as sa. Our security policy stops developers been able to log on to the SQL servers with the sa account (which I agree with). For some of our custom maintenance plans to run we need the owner ot be sa.

So, to change the database owner do the following:
USE database_name
EXEC sp_changedbowner 'sa'

Local development SMTP server

If you are writing an application or website function that sends out emails you may want to use a local SMTP that doesn't actually forward on the email. This is useful when testing bulk mail, as you wouldn't want to send out actual emails to multiple test addresses. There are many apps out there that perfrom this function. The one that I use is SMTP4dev which is available from CodePlex.

Dual screen wallpaper on Windows 7

If you have a dual, triple or quad screen setup, you can have a desktop wallper span all of them. I am using a free piece of software to do this called DisplayFusion, you can download this from http://www.binaryfortress.com/displayfusion/

Aborting a Sitecore event

So you've managed to intercept a Sitecore event, but you now need to stop all other events from occurring. I've had to do this when creating an alias to make sure it doesn't effect any other item. So we check all the possible clashes in the item:creating event, if one is found we won't to stop all further processing.

To stop the further processing all you need to do is call the following:

SitecoreEventArgs.Cancel(args);

You may also want to pass a message to the user, so just add a call to SheerResponse.

SheerResponse.ShowError(shortDescription, longDescription);

Update AssemblyInfo as part of the build process

I use TeamCity to build by code as part of continuous integration. One of the tasks I tend to do is to update the AssemblyInfo file with the current build number.

First you need to ensure you have installed the open source project MSBuild Community Tasks, downloadable from here.

Then the code to do this is:

<Target Name="PreBuildTasks">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <Version>$(BUILD_NUMBER)</Version>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <MSBuild.Community.Tasks.AssemblyInfo 
    CodeLanguage="CS" 
    AssemblyCompany="CompanyName"  
    AssemblyCopyright="Copyright (c) CompanyName2009"  
    AssemblyDescription="Description"  
    AssemblyFileVersion="$(Version)"  
    AssemblyVersion="$(Version)"  
    AssemblyTitle="Titlek"  
    Guid="1938930d-a5f3-4045-a5f3-f5b930d70ade"  
    AssemblyProduct="Product name"  
    OutputFile="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\ProjectName\Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs" />
</Target>

Please note this has only be tested to work on TeamCity.

Create build file from solution file

You can create a build file from your solution for use with MSBuild. Useful if you are using any automated build tools like TeamCity.

To do this, open up the "Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt"
Navigate to the folder containing your solution file
Enter the following:

Set MSBuildEmitSolution = 1
msbuild solutionname.sln

Once complete you should see a file in the folder called solutionname.sln.proj which is now your build file. You can edit this build file as required. I tend to add pre build code to update AssemblyInfo.cs and post build code to fire off unit tests and to package up the final output.

Changing default editor for batch scripts.

Right clicking on a .bat or .cmd file and select edit will open the file in the default program, Notepad. I prefer to use a different editor. To change the default for these files requires a registry change:

1. Open the registry editor (regedit.exe)
2. Browse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\batfile\shell\edit\command
3. Edit the default value and change to the executable you want to use to edit the batch files,
   e.g. "C:\Program Files\Programmer's Notepad\pn.exe" "%1"
4. Click OK
5. Browse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\cmdfile\shell\edit\command
6. Edit the default value and change to the executable you want to use to edit the command files.
7. Click OK

No restart required.

IIS 7.0 not serving CSS files

After a rebuild of IIS 7, I couldn't get any CSS files to return. If I browsed to the path http://localhost/styles.css, I would a blank page (even when I view source). The problem was that during the reinstall of IIS I forgot to add the Static Content Component.

For Vista and Windows 7:
Control Panel -> Programs -> Turn Windows features on or off

Then navigate to: Internet Information Services -> World Wide Web Services -> Common HTTP Features
Enable the Static Content option

Cannot load macro project error

After moving 'My Documents' folder to a different drive, I started getting an error when loading the macro's explorer window. The error was:

Cannot load macro project '' for the following reason:

'C:\Users\\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\VSMacros80\Samples\Samples.vsmacros' is an invalid or inaccessible macro project file

The problem is when you move your documents folder, this updates the environment variable %USERPROFILE%, but the macro's path for Visual Studio are stored in the registry.

Searching the registry I found the following two keys which had a 'path' value, referencing the C:\.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\vsmacros\OtherProjects7\0
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\vsmacros\RecordingProject7

To solve, change the 'path' values in the above keys to your new location and restart Visual Studio.

Attach to multiple w3wp processes

This is an update to a previous post as I am now working on a project that can have up to 3 w3wp processes running.

I've changed the following lines:

Dim proc2 As EnvDTE80.Process2 = dbg2.GetProcesses(trans, compName).Item("w3wp.exe")
proc2.Attach2(dbgeng)

with:

For Each proc2 As EnvDTE80.Process2 In dbg2.GetProcesses(trans, compName)
    If proc2.Name.Contains("w3wp.exe") Then
        proc2.Attach2(dbgeng)
    End If
Next