By host on Saturday, February 16, 2008 7:47 PM

Drive 200km (120 mi) north of Toronto... and boy do you find Snow.    Spent a lovely day in a snow bank ... and helped the local economy. 

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By host on Monday, February 11, 2008 8:21 PM

Well... I have been thinking about this for a while.. and how best to support UDT in SQLGridSelectedView.  My current belief is I shouldn't as I can't know all the possible needs. 

So I decided to develop a generic Stored Procedure

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By host on Sunday, February 10, 2008 9:38 PM

I have been playing around with the Membership tables and saw a request in the DotnetNuke forums that go my attention.  It seems there is a lot of confusion on just how to get data out of the ASPNET_Membership data tables.  

The user was asking how to get the LastLoginDate for a user and adjust that by the timezone ... Well is all in there somewhere.  

Consider the following procedure.  The following stored procedure will return the username (for conformation) and the LastLoginDate adjusted by the timezone value associated with the user.  The default if none is found is 0. 

You should be able to tweak this procedure as you need.  Just use the script in the Host>SQL window ..

I have been rather explicit in the way I built the proc so you can see where all the intermediate field come from ... you can combine some of these to possibly improve performance (??)  but I prefer the readability over the slight gain you may get. 

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[GetLastLoginDateByUser]') AND type in (N'P', N'PC'))...

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By host on Sunday, February 10, 2008 2:25 PM

The follow blog will relate the steps I took to implement this new DotNetNuke Version 4.8.0 site.

Some Background would be helpful. The Old site was on DNN V3.3.5 and had been there for quite some time. I was rather embarassed that site had been unchanged for over 6 months, especially after being at Open Force '07 in Vegas.

So once the new year had come, I began working on the how I would upgrade the site. I choose to start fresh with a new DNN 4.8.0 site base on several factors: a) I want a clean up so old stuff I had in the site b) I wanted to move to SQL 2005 c) I believed I would spend more time upgrading and fixing then starting with a new copy d) I had time - it's cold and snowing.

Here are the steps I took. Please note that my site is hosted by DotNetPark and any reference to actions taken on their site my differ depending on your hosting provider. By the way, I highly recommend DotNetPark.

1) Backup the database - Using DotNEtPark's Database backup functionality I copied the...

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By host on Saturday, January 26, 2008 10:00 PM

I began work on my DNN V4.8 version of my Site.  Over the next few weeks you will see several changes.  I  have been delaying this change until I had something worth while to show off..

Well the new version of SQLGridSelectedView is coming to a point that I will begin to offer it to a wide group of beta testers to see if they can break it.   It have been a long time coming, but the new module is a complete re-write from the group up and this has been a big learning curve. 

The new design allows me to dynamically place all the selection fields on the form.  This is also the most work as I must handle the viewstate problems this causes.  Basically if the form is dynamic, you need to restore the page in memory prior to the page load event as just prior to the page load event the viewstate is restored and the user values are place in the fields.  If the fields don't exist, then you can't restore the viewstate and user input. 

So for the first version of the new control, the selection and display...

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By host on Saturday, January 05, 2008 5:15:52 PM

Since attending OpenForce '07 in Vegas this passed November, I have been working on a new Version of SQLGridSelectedView.  I had several features I wanted to add, but the main reason for a new version was the conversion from ASP.NET V1.1 to V2.0.  This also meant the move to VS2005 and the new architecture used for Web Applications. 

I am in the home stretch on the implementation and have been testing and testing -- it gets rather boring after a while, but I want this version to be relatively stable before going to beta testing.  I have faced a few challenges along the way, especially getting DNN to work as smoothing in VS2005 as I had it VS2003.  But most of those issues behind me I did run into a rather interesting issue with ASP.NET V2.0 GridView. 

The issue surrounds getting a CSS class to work on the pager used by the GridView.  As much as I tried, and boy did I try everything I could think of, the more I more I started to dislike IE. I finally got a hint on this was a "known" problem when...

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By host on Sunday, April 01, 2007 3:51:53 PM

Well first off ... apologies for a rather lengthy absence from posting ... this should change as I want to keep the information flowing.  (sorta rubbed off from the Code Camp...)

Anyway back to the subject at hand - the Toronto Code Camp.  This event ran on Saturday March 31 in Toronto (surprise) and organized by Chris Defour from the East of Toronto .Net Users Group fame.   I am quiet indebted to Chris as he organized and ran a great show.  All the session were packed with enthusiastic attendees - beside the price was right.

I planned to present a session on DotNetNuke and was some what concerned that interest would be in some of the more detailed software topics, however is a pre-meeting I learned that my session was listed quite favorably amoung those registered attendies that expressed a preference.   So, the presure was on. 

Well, from the sounds of it and the feedback given, the presentation was a hit.  Approximately 100 people attended my session and this made for some lively discussion...

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By host on Saturday, November 11, 2006 9:14:11 PM

The latest version of the SQLGridSelectedView beta has been release.  I fix one issue that has caused some problems, but I truely never knew why until recently.  SQLGridSelectedView would on occasion not work in Medium Trust, I could never get a resonable answer for this, but I beleive I stumbled over the issue but accident.  I have been using the OLEDB SQL driver to access the database - this has worked well, with very few compliants - until I attempt to access MySQL - I needed a OLEDB driver - so I attempted to use the SQL native driver.  Once implemented, my trust problem seem to disappear.  I soon realize that the SQL native driver was meant for Medium Trust solution ( a real "a ah" moment)So please try this in Medium trust mode and let me know if you have any problems.I also extended the size of the SQL primary statement from 2000 character to 8000 character.  I had thought 2000 would be plenty of room - as I imagined that you would true to stored procedure if you got even close to 2000 characters.  Well,...

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By host on Saturday, October 21, 2006 8:46:47 AM

I haven't done a very good job of keeping this blog active.  What can I say -- we are all busy. 

So I best tell you what I have been busy with .... I started work on a new version SQLGridSelectedView in the mid-Summer and have been slowly working on the various peices I wanted to improve - a lot of stuff under the hood needed attention and still there is more I want to address, but I have a working version that I need to release so I can get the customer feed back.



There are 2 major additions to this version of SQLGridSelectedView - the re-designed Setting screen and the abililty to edit records.  The re-design form meant re-doing all the documentation and screen shots - a two-week effort alone, but the result is worth it. Hope you agree.

Well I best talk about my approach to the Record editing... I actually launch a separate form that displays all the fields and allows the user to enter...

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By host on Monday, April 24, 2006 4:38:43 AM

Recently, a problem with the "Wait of above" option in SQLGridSelectView surfaced.  I review the issue and pronouced that the user needed to correct his useage and change certain options to get it to work.   Simple - on to other mail.

Well to put it another way, I attempted to ignore the problem.  Well, the user came back with the usual "it still doesn't".  Well, I had to look and see what was going on..  I set up a test and got the results I want... told the user to set another set of options... Simple - on to other mail.

Then another user asked the same question.  Hmmm?  So this time I really looked.  I didn't like what I saw:

1) The first two problems were real, and I had tested with an older version of the module that contained a bug that allowed it to work  However, with the advent of the Multi-Select feature of the Select filter, I really messed the code up had no handle the change well.

2) I had built a test database using data described by the user, but created bad data in that...

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By host on Thursday, April 13, 2006 8:37:49 AM

As you may or may not be aware, the ASP.NET Forums for DotNetNuke as being phased out.  So, I am going to spend the majority of my Forum trolling over at the DNN Forums at http://www.dotnetnuke.com/tabid/795/Default.aspx

So, if you want to post a comment or question in a forum and hope for a response from me, please use the DNN forums from now on.  I will primarily focus on "Let's Chat About It!" as I believe this is at least the starting place.  Alternatively, you can drop me a line here using the Feedback module on the home page.

Please note, that it may take some time to re-gain my unmoderated status, so my responses will be a little slow initially.

See you there.  Paul.

By host on Saturday, March 25, 2006 5:27:42 PM

Today I released the final version of SQLGridSelectedView V3.4e.  This is the non-beta release for the module. 

It seems I can't leave it alone. I had planned to just release this version with the one or two little issues corrected, but instead I had to add a bit more. 

Although I had not mentioned it, the beta's had some improved SQL error handling.  Previous versions would just dump the ASP.NET stack dump with all the detail including the SQL command being exeuted.  My original rational was I want to see where I screwed up as most of the SQL error were based on the program's attempts to build the SQL command.  Now that I seem to have that under control, I really didn't need to display all that extra stuff.  Also, I really didn't think about it until I got a comment from a user asking that I curb the detail displayed.  So, I have been cleaning up the error handling in V3.4

Two last pieces were required. The first, was an option to display the SQL command whenever a SQL error occured.  This...

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By host on Saturday, March 18, 2006 10:41:47 PM

I got a feature request for SQLGridSelectedView to allow multi-answers so the user could use the T-SQL "In" feature.  Specifically, the user, Paul Bennett, wanted a way to allow a copy and paste from Excel to be handled.

He wanted to pass in a column of Excel data containing Computername so he could do a Select like:

Select * from Requests where Computername in ( [Search:Text] )

While this would work for a single entry, I agreed that this is a worthwhile feature, so I added a Multi-Answer option to the TextSearch filters to allow the end-user to enter multiple entries.  Each Entry must be on a separate line.  If the entry ends with a comma (",") I will remove it.  Blank lines will be ignored.

So the above example would expand to something like:

Select * from Requests where Computername in ( 'COMP1', 'COMP2' )

Each entry is enclosed in single quotes and separated by commas. 



I have also added a similar feature to the Filter selections.  When the Multi-Select...

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By host on Sunday, March 12, 2006 2:04:55 PM

Now that I have returned to Canada, I started work on completing the beta version of SQLGridSelectedView.  Today I released the latest beta version 3.4c. 

This version continues the work in two specific areas -  Localization and date selection.  I had many request for a calendar feature on the date selection so I finally honoured that request.  However, I use the time feature in several on my installations, but others found this to be overkill so I now allow the addition of the time to be a feature.

When I initially implemented custom column formating, the ability to sort these columns was lost.  I have added that feature so you can now sort the formated columns

Localization is a tricky issues, especially when you are working in single language all the time.  Living in Canada where there are two official languages, all application must be able to handle either French or English, so I am at least aware that there is a need.  I have chosen not to localize the Edit Settings for SQLGridSelectedView...

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By host on Monday, March 06, 2006 7:40:37 PM

In the spirit of Bob Vila .. I am almost "home again" ... I will be returning home later this week.

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By host on Saturday, February 18, 2006 9:23:36 PM

Over the next few weeks, I will be out of the country and supporting my site from a distance.  While I will be checking often, I doubt it will be as often as I currently check the site.  So please bare with me, but I hope to get back to all that have questions or feedback on the any of modules.

Enjoy!

By host on Thursday, February 16, 2006 10:37:08 PM

I recently became a benefactor of the DotNetNuke Project.  While I joined at the Bronze level, I believe this is worth while as I have been able to sustain the developement of this site based solely on the donations of others.  Therefore, it only makes sense that I "pass it forward" as the saying goes. 

The Core Team needs the support of the users and I believe that this means putting up some hard earned Cash... Well if you consider the base reason of why that money was donated, by which I mean the DotNetNuke framework itself, there is no way I could fail to become a benefactor.

I encourage anyone who has benefited from the use of the Framework to consider becoming a benefactor - even if just for one year.  

This is the best way to encourage the Core team to stay the course and ensure a healthy framework that continues to grow.

Thanks

By host on Monday, February 06, 2006 7:52:51 PM

I was reviewing my site traffic over the last week and noticed several hits from rather strange sources.  So, I looked into the DNN Sitelog to determine what pages were referenced.  My site traffic is low enuf that I can look at the top referrers to see where my site gets the biggest links without too much hassel.

As it turns out, both Kate Gregory and Rob Windsor have referenced my site relating to my efforts at the Toronto Code Camp.   Take a look... especially if you are considering speaking at an event.  

Many thanks Kate and Rob...

By host on Sunday, February 05, 2006 5:54:01 PM

This week I received several E-mails requesting better support for data handling in SQLGridSelectedView.  The main issue as the specific format need to satisify SQL Select processing.  It seems that users would error in entering the needed data and the results were not pleasant.  So, I started to investigate the addition of a Calendar Popup. 

My needs were a bit specific and thus I couldn't use the Calendar that exists in DNN as it is tied to the region settings and the format must be numeric to work.  Ugh!  Also, I needed to be able to input time.

So, I started with a Google search and looked at many Calendar Popups that would certainly do the job, but most were over 40K in size... I really wanted something a little smaller - under 20K. 

I finally found "DateTimePicker" by TengYong Ng (www.rainforestnet.com).  While this is small, it did work with alpha months in the Date string and allowed for Time values.  I modified the routine to include...

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By host on Wednesday, February 01, 2006 9:21 AM

I just updated my site with a new Logo. I would like to thank Bill Clone for his work. It was much appreciated.

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By host on Sunday, January 29, 2006 12:48 PM

I was advised by a user of SQLGridSelectedView (thanks Roy Dean) that column sorting did not function when using column formatting - the latest feature to be added to SQLGridSelectedView.

Sure enough - the initial page would display, but clicking on a column to sort would result in an empty display.  Simply put, the OnSortCommand was not firing. In the case of column formatting, SQLGridSelectedView turns off the AutoGenerateColumns property and must create the column structure manually. A quick check of the forums confirmed my oversite of not providing the SortExpression on the columns.   Simple. 20 miuntes -  Added one line of code and done -- Not so fast - still didn't work ???

So, back to the forums and a lot of reading and testing... still no luck.  Then a post indicated that the Column definition must be defined prior to the Page_Load event - so I must define the column definitions in the Page_Init event.  What?  Why?

I was getting the initial display by defining the columns in the Page_Load...

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By host on Tuesday, January 24, 2006 10:08:00 PM

Seems a letter I wrote to the hosts was actually read  and made it to the show -- Number #163 ... you can hear the entire show at www.dotnetrocks.com or just the letter at the link below.

As I wrote in my previous blog entries, I presented a talk on DotNetNuke Module development at the Toronto Code Camp.  As rank beginner in this field - public presentations - I was rather green. 

The reason I applied to speak, was a growing belief that I could do it and that a .Net community event would be the best venue to start (or end) my speaking career.  About the time that the annoucement of the Code Camp, the "boys" from DotNetRocks (Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin) were doing a road trip stoping at various .Net meetings throughout the U.S. as they headed to Vegas for the Launch of VS 2005.  Well as they spoke to each group, they recorded comments from the various .Net Community members.  It seemed to be an engaging group that, perhaps, I...

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By host on Tuesday, January 17, 2006 10:55:00 PM

I had the pleasure of being a speaker at the Toronto Code Camp on this past Saturday - January 14th - and it was a real success.  I spoke on "Module Development in the DotNetNuke Framework V3/V4".  My session was well attended as were all the sessions.  The camp had close to 200 attendees - see www.TorontoCodeCamp.com for details and pictures..  but here is one me.

Many thanks to organizers ...  especially Chris Defour.

 

By host on Thursday, January 12, 2006 7:42 PM

I have added another example to the SQLGridSelectedView Examples page.  This example is one of the most asked question I get... how to create a hyperlink in the Grid.  

This is a simple example pulled from the Link Table of the DNN database.  I just use the URL and Title columns from 'http' links to build the hyperlink in the SQL Select Statement.  Rather simple... but it is not obvious.  Give it a try...

By host on Monday, January 09, 2006 7:13:00 PM

Today I started to create a rather simple stored procedure that I thought would take a few minutes... Well it fell into the "20 minute" rule... if you estimate about "20 minutes" it won't be...

Anyway, this procedure needed to build SQL Select based on parameters passed in.  So, I needed to user SQL EXECUTE statement.  I create @SQL as the varchar that I contained the select statement and passed the command to the EXECUTE.. When procedure ran, I got the MSG 203  error message, but it was truncated due to the length of the SQL statement..  No problem, off to Books Online to determine what the MSG 203 message -- not there... Google?

OK .. 20 minutes later I finally discovered that any statement I passed into the EXECUTE statement did not work.  Hmmmm.  So back to the EXECUTE statement documentation.  Seems that I had missed a little detail.  If you are using a variable -- eg. @SQL in my case -- you must surround the EXECUTE parameter statement in brackets.  

So...(using the NorthWind database...

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By host on Sunday, January 08, 2006 9:14 AM

At the beginning of the year I released the initial version of SQLGridSelectedView with several changes that I thought would be useful.  Also I need to "re-brand" the module from my old site to Tresslworks. 

The initial release, V3.3a, had a rather major issue in the release kit. I appearently released the aspx file referring to my previous "companyname" namespace, but shipped the Tressleworks version of the DLL.  Needless to say, it would not load upon upload to any system -- except mine.

I corrected that version and released V3.3b.  Now that people could see it, a minor issue appeared related to the export function. Entered date ranges were ignored,  only the displayed default date ranges would be exported to data file. 

Version V3.3c has corrected this issue and I added the ability to set the DropDown Label text for "ALL" and "Not Applicable".  I have been asked for this several times and I forgot to put this feature on my change list.

I also moved the location of the header message...

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By host on Saturday, January 07, 2006 11:28 PM

The title graphic is base on a picture of a bridge that was shown on the Trains webiste as part of there photo contest between to amateur photographers.

The original photo was taken by  Mike Yuhas and is located here http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/006/206skgap.asp

Many thanks Mike!

 

By host on Saturday, January 07, 2006 10:56:00 PM

This is my initial blog entry.  At this point I feel as if I am writing this in an empty room, but I believe this will change over time. 

So I am getting close to completing my new site.  So why TressleWorks?  It is rather simple, I am Model Railroading fan and was looking for a name that sort of reflect that aspect.  A tressle or trestle - take your pick - is a beam used to build a table.  In the case of railway tressles, the wood beams collectively are call a tressle.  Most tressle bridges now are metal, but there are stil some wooden ones around.

I have just released my latest version of SQLGridSelectedView. I made several tweaks to the code to correct some minor errors - specially I broke the data export with respect to user entered date ranges - version 3.3a and 3.3b both ignored the user input and only displayed the default date range in the exported data file.  This has been corrected.  

I also moved the location of the header message to appear above the data selections - it seems...

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