My new web server is Server 2008 & IIS7 and SQL 2008 and I’ve deployed a test version of an application that had a mysterious 503 Service Unavailable error; not the main app, but all pages within a specific folder and I couldn’t see why. None of the settings were different for that folder. A quick search hit Phil’s blog entry, which led me to Keith’s. It’s the second quote which kicked off an “Oh, I wonder if it’s that” moment:

I think that the main confusion here is around the purpose of http.sys reservations. Reservations are used to prevent squatting. For example, SQL doesn't want other apps, admin or otherwise, to listen on http://+:80/sql/, so they make a reservation with their creds. Reservations are not for preventing malware from listening on your machine. If you have malware on your machine it can just open a socket if it wants to receive data.

Suddenly it made sense. The folder giving the errors was called Reports and SQL Reporting Services is installed, which also has a Reports folder, with a reservation. Rename the folder and everything works. So if you’re experience unusual service errors, this might be one to check.

Watching the live stream of the PDC keynote yesterday, there were bits of Windows 7 that appealed to me. Libraries and Home Groups seems good, as does the Device Center (I notice they didn’t have a Zune connected in the demo). I like the easy switch to projects, useful for those of us who present, and the improved multi-monitor support, although they didn’t demo a smarter taskbar for the additional monitors (why don’t they just buy UltraMon?). UAC improvements, good; touch, nice but useless for most people; support for user created themes, yay – I’ve long hated the fact that you couldn’t customise without hacking your system.

All of the improvements are long awaited, but there’s one thing in Vista that annoys me beyond belief and that’s the “weird stuff” that just seems to happen for no reason. An example is the deletion of files and folders which mysteriously fails. For example, I’ve just extracted a zip archive containing a few files and folders. I look through the extracts, decide I don’t need to keep it, so delete the files. Vista tells me I don’t have permission to delete one of the folders; err, I’ve just created it, the folder structure (from the parent) is owned by me and I have full permissions. If I go into the folder and delete the files from it, that works and then I can delete the folder; but I couldn’t delete them together. Weird and annoying. This sort of thing happens on a regular basis; maybe it’s my setup, but there’s no logic in the flow of what happens.

Sadly I’ll have to wait for a download before I can play, but at least I have Visual Studio 2010 to keep my beta fix in check.

For years I’ve been recommending Jeff’s SqlSiteMapprovider from his MSDN Magazine column, which allows you to have your site map in a database. I had a request this morning on the forums for a copy in VB, so I used the convertor at the excellent DeveloperFusion site and tweaked it a little. So now you can download a copy in VB.

As I blogged earlier, DDD7, the free one day Saturday geek fest, opened for registration this morning. Less than 4 hours later it was full, with plenty of people of the waiting list. I suspect it’s the power of several blogs and tweets, rather than just mine, but it does show the power of the community. There’s no advertising for this, nor is there any need; in fact it would be a waste given the time it took to fill up. Is this a sign of the economic times? Free events fill up quick.

For those who haven’t yet registered well, too bad. I’m not on the committee and have no power over these things, so if I wasn’t speaking, I’d be in the same position, scrabbling for entry.

What does this show? For me it’s that the developer community in the UK is vibrant, alive, motivated. Sure there’s no expense, apart from travel, but that’s enough for some who come far and while you don’t have to get a day off work, it’s still effort; taking a day out of your weekend to attend a conference means you have to be motivated keen. Now not everyone who has signed up will attend, there’s always a drop off; peoples plans change, they get double booked, they are forced to work that weekend, the partner wants to go shopping/out for lunch/to the in-laws/rock-climbing, but the place always feels full, so the rate can’t be that high.

What we’re now in is a quandary. How do we continue with DDD without disappointing those who want to attend, but still having the feel of the community event. How do we find a big enough venue to hold, say, 500 people, with 4 or 5 large halls? I think the Microsoft campus currently holds around 350 people across four rooms and the fourth room comes with added complexity because it’s in the building next door and requires escorts to the secure areas of the building. And cost, don’t forget that; who’s going to pay for this venue? Microsoft are gracious enough to open their doors, but it costs them; they pay for staff to host the event and pay for the food. For DDD Ireland we were hosted in a college campus and hosted by volunteers, but we still needed the generosity of many people.

So what are the options?

• Hold a double event, repeated on the Sunday; not a two day event, that’s a whole different beast, but the same event repeated on the next day. I suspect there would be less people signing up on the Sunday, which then gets to the question of is it worth it for the second day; it would cost twice the amount to host.
• Find a different venue. But where? There are three parts to this problem:
• Facilities. It needs to hold the required number of people and have the 4 or 5 presenting rooms.
• Cost. While it would be great to live on the generosity of others, the practicality is that most places charge; who’s going to pay?
• Location. This is a no win situation really; enough people already don’t want to travel the distance to Reading and would prefer something more local. London? Costs more to host, although it might be easier for some to get to.
• Smaller, more localised events. All of the above venue issues arrive, along with the effort of running the event. DDD Scotland is well under control, DDD Ireland was a success and hopefully there will be more, but is there a case for DDD West Country, or DDD North? I think there is a case, and frankly there’s nothing stopping you putting on an event if you want to. Get together with your local user group people and see about combining an event.
• Start charging; even a small fee would probably cover the cost of a venue, but we’re now into conference territory rather than the community event. Taking payment would invariably involve more time, effort, risk, and would probably come with all sorts of legal issues too. Still, something as small as £10 could have a big impact; cover the cost of the venue, food, with what’s left over for a dinner? Or swag. I’m not sure I like this as an option, but it is an option; I just don’t feel it would be DDD anymore.

So, views?

Go register; you know you want to.

A product I’m working on requires colours for certain items, to make them more easily identifiable and these items are often a selection in a list. This makes a great deal of sense as we are visual creatures; it’s much easier to pick out a red item from a list than having to read the text. In UI terms it may not look great, the colours glaring with the overall design, but that’s a point for another day.

So it seems sensible to have the list display those colours, but herein lies the problem. Or problems. The ListBox doesn’t have an OnItemDataBound method, so you can’t add the style attributes as each item is being bound. This leaves two choices:

1. You could loop through the items in the DataBound event afterwards, adding the style attributes.
2. Add the items manually, adding the style attributes to the ListItem before you add it.

Neither are particularly onerous; for this application there are only a few items, used on a few pages.

All looked rosy until postback when the styles just disappear; no jarring colours to help identify the items. A quick investigation reveals that the ListItem doesn’t persist the attributes as part of its ViewState, which means that although you can display the list items in colour, the colour disappears once you post back. There are ways to get around this, client side etc, but that’s just not an avenue I want to persist; the effort just isn’t worth it.

As it turns out I’m quite happy that it is a problem, because I don’t actually like the colours in the list itself; it really doesn’t look great. Now I’ve got a good excuse when the client says “why can’t the lists be in colour”.

I’m a Google search user, have been since it was first released. I like the simplicity and the format. I have nothing against other search providers, but I’m comfortable with Google and until something more compelling comes along, I’ll stick with it. I’m a middle aged Englishman, so by nature change doesn’t come easily.

This morning I received an email (which Outlook identified as junk mail – oh how I laughed) from the Live Search Team, offering perks if I use Live Search; ooh, swag I though. Just a small download and it’ll track my searches. Wait, a download? Maybe not then. It doesn’t matter anyway, since the offer only applies to “legal residents of the 50 United States and Washington DC”. Illegal residents, no. The rest of the world, no. US citizens who use Firefox, also no; you have to use IE.

I may be out of touch, but I thought the best way to get people to use your product was to make a better product.

Disclaimer: I’m not a member of the Church of MVC. But there are bits I really like and there is a huge amount of confusion over, well, just about everything really; what it is, why it’s here', when it should be used, and so on. There is a trend, good or bad, towards REST based architectures and certainly URL rewriting is common, especially in content management systems and anywhere ID values are used in URLs. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could use the cool URL Routing features of MVC in WebForm applications? Well, you can, and it’s actually pretty easy.

Rather than me tell you how, here’s Wally, with a podcast and code showing how easy it is. After all, if Wally can manage it, so can you.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the videos for ReMix UK are now up on the agenda page. Slides are available for most sessions and you can watch the slide/audio presentation inline. You might have to turn up the volume for some of them as the audio is a little quiet. We’re planning to get the 20/20 session split into the individual talks, to make linking to each one easier.

One of the things I was hoping for at ReMix was a podcast interview with Scott Guthrie and Bill Buxton. I had a couple of questions I wanted to ask him, but otherwise had no plan and since it was while the sessions were going on, I groveled to the NxtGenUG boys to record it. So it’s now in two parts as part of their once regular, but now sporadic, podcasts. This was just Scott, Bill, Dave, Rich, Chris and myself, sitting in a quietish area with a cuppa. It was also videoed, but since it was Rich’s new HD camera we might have to wait for him to buy more disc space before he can process it.