The AutoCompleteExtender that came with the Ajax Control Toolkit is great for linear data, but what happens when you want to customize its output, e.g say you want to display the multiple values in a table form?

This is definately possible since at the end of the day, the UI is rendered using Javascript, however you will need to do some tweaking.

WebService

In order to return multiple values, your webservice needs to return an object[] array, or more specifically, a Pair<> array, this is because the client side javascript reading the webservice functions such that if a pair is returned, it will set the whole pair object as the “value” for the item.

[WebMethod]
public object[] GetCompletionList(string prefixText, int count)
{
//demo code
if (count == 0)
{
count = 10;
}

if (prefixText.Equals(“xyz”))
{
return new string[0];
}

Random random = new Random();
var items = new List
>(count);

var jss = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer();
for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
{
char c1 = (char)random.Next(65, 90);
char c2 = (char)random.Next(97, 122);
char c3 = (char)random.Next(97, 122);
int id = i;
int age = random.Next(18, 70);
var item = new Pair(id.ToString(), new object[]{prefixText + c1 + c2 +c3, age});
items.Add(item);
}

return items.ToArray();
}

Now that the webservice is returning the data, lets move on to the client side javascripts. What we need to do is to “override” the onClientItemSelected and onClientShowing javascripts 

The below example assumes a HTML table display format.

function OnClientItemSelected(behaviour, args) {
var element = behaviour.get_element();
var control = element.control;

//args._value is the pair object which is returned
if (control && control.set_text)
control.set_text(args._value.First);
else
element.value = args._value.First;
}

function OnClientShowing(behaviour, e) {
var ResultsDiv = behaviour.get_completionList();

for (var i = 0; i < ResultsDiv.childNodes.length; i++) {

var item = ResultsDiv.childNodes[i];

//since the pair object stores the values to display in the second variable, lets get it out to do our own processing
var vals = item._value.Second;

 //remove all child nodes

while (item.childNodes.length > 0)
item.removeChild(item.firstChild);

//create the table
var tbl = document.createElement(“table”);
tbl.setAttribute(“width”, “100%”);
tbl.setAttribute(“border”, “1″);
tbl.setAttribute(“style”, “border: solid 1px black;border-collapse: collapse;”);
tbl._value = item._value;

var tbody = document.createElement(“tbody”);
var tr = document.createElement(“tr”);
tr.setAttribute(“valign”, “top”);
tr._value = item._value;
for (var j = 0; j < vals.length; j++) {
CreateTableCell(tr, vals[j], item._value);
}
tbody.appendChild(tr);
tbl.appendChild(tbody);
item.appendChild(tbl);
}
}

function CreateTableCell(tr, str, value, width) {
td = document.createElement(“td”);
//this is a very important step, if you forget to set the td._value, when onClientSelected triggers, args._value will be null
td._value = value;
td.setAttribute(“width”, width);
td.innerHTML = str;
tr.appendChild(td);
}

For those that’s still in the dark about this cool feature, here’s the lowdown on it.

If you put a app_offline.htm file inside your asp.net application, on the next request, ASP.NET will shutdown the app domain and return the contents of the file in response to all dynamic asp.net requests. This way, you can easily take down your site for maintenance and updates and then bring it right up by deleting the file once you are done!

Ever so often, especially when you are using interop inside .net applications, you may trigger some code which will totally crash your system.

This prompt usually does not help in any way whatsoever.

So here’s how to take it out permanently.

1. Change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Windows\ErrorMode from 0 to 2

2. Change HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\DontShowUI from 0 to 1

Its been quite a while since my first post of VSTS and it seems Mercury Loadrunner has caught up in terms of functionality.

Anyway here’s my 2nd post in this series which tells you how to improve performance when doing a load test.

Things to note…

Since the load test agent is licensed based on a per processor model, it is generally advisable to get a processor with as many cores as possible, and also pump up the ram for the machine, but as the agent is a 32bit application, it will not be able to use > 4GB of ram and does not work so well in a x64 environment. Recommended installation environment is still either Windows XP or Windows 2003.

The good news is in VSTS 2010, the agent itself is x64 so all these issues should magically disappear

ok back to the main topic, how to optimize your load tests

1. stick to a x86 os with a maximum of 4GB of ram for load test agents
   
2. Turn on server GC
   

   To enable your application to use Server GC, you need to modify either the VSTestHost.exe.config or the QTAgent.exe.config. If you are not using a Controller and Agent setup, then you need to modify the VSTesthost.exe.config. If you are using a controller and agent, then modify the QTAgent.exe.config for each agent machine.

   Open the correct file. The locations are

   VSTestHost.exe.config – C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE

   QTAgent.exe.config – C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Test Load Agent\LoadTest

   To enable gcserver you need to add the following line in the runtime section:

   <gcServer enabled=”true” />

   It should look something like:

   <?xml version =”1.0″?>
   <configuration>
   <runtime>
   <gcServer enabled=”true” />
   <assemblyBinding xmlns=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1″>
   <probing privatePath=”PrivateAssemblies;PublicAssemblies”/>
   </assemblyBinding>
   </runtime>
   </configuration>

   Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/slumley/pages/improve-load-test-performance-on-multi-processor-machines.aspx

3. Turn on agent connection pooling (Run Settings -> MySettingsName ->Properties -> WebTest Connection Pool
   By default VSTS emulates a client open and closing TCP connections to the server, however these opening and closing of connections take up resources. If your chief aim is to test the server, and especially if your server is sitting behind a load balancer with TCP offloading, turn this off
4. Create a declarative WebTest program to easily change parameters inside your webtest
   http://blogs.msdn.com/densto/pages/declarativewebtest-declarativewebtestserializer.aspx
5. Specify ResponseBodyCaptureLimit – By indicating how much of the response you want to capture for parsing, you can run away from those dreaded agent out of memory errors, this is especially so when you are doing e.g a file download test
   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.visualstudio.testtools.webtesting.webtest.responsebodycapturelimit%28VS.80%29.aspx)
6. Monitor your servers, but not so frequent: You don’t wish to overload your servers just because you want to monitor their performance right

about 3 years ago, i bought a Sony USB 4GB thumbdrive at a PC fair in Taiwan. And recently hearing about the great performance of the Sandisk Cruzer, i decided to get one too!

However when i did a benchmark for the thumbdrives, i realize that although the Cruzer meets the specified speed limits, the ol Sony thumbdrive also meets them!

Kudos to Sony for coming up with such great technology which is way ahead of their peers!

Here’s the steps on how to remove the U3 Partition completely from Sandisk Drives

1. Launch U3
2. Click on the U3 Icon
3. Click U3 Launchpad Settings
4. Click Uninstall

Done

I’ve been getting my hands dirty with Visual Studio Team Suite Load Test the past few months. In the coming few months, i will be posting several articles on my experiences with VSTS.

First i’ll start with a comparison between VSTS and Mercury LoadRunner. I’m including the version numbers as the newer versions of these 2 software promises much much more!

SEA MVPs Blog-A-Holic – Unravel the gems hidden within the SEA MVPs community and help spread the word to the entire virtual landscape. Blog about it right now and share it with your technical communities!

Click http://seamvpblogaholic.spaces.live.com/

SQL Server database mirroring is cool, especially in the areas of cost savings. However setting up a proper database mirroring is not as straightforward as it seems, although it is much much easier than doing a clustering.

Things you need to do

1. Connection String: The databases are in 2 different instances, make sure you use the latest SQL Client with the failover partner parameter to ease the failover
   “Provider=SQLNCLI;Data Source=myServerAddress;Failover Partner=myMirrorServerAddress;Initial Catalog=myDataBase;Integrated Security=True;”
2. SQL Accounts: Mirror the login accounts too!
   Microsoft has a KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918992) which teaches you how to create a stored procedure which prints out a create user sql which you can run on the backup server to create an exact duplicate of the user account in the primary server.
   i’ve attached the script here for easy reference

   USE master
   GO
   IF OBJECT_ID (’sp_hexadecimal’) IS NOT NULL
   DROP PROCEDURE sp_hexadecimal
   GO
   CREATE PROCEDURE sp_hexadecimal
   @binvalue varbinary(256),
   @hexvalue varchar (514) OUTPUT
   AS
   DECLARE @charvalue varchar (514)
   DECLARE @i int
   DECLARE @length int
   DECLARE @hexstring char(16)
   SELECT @charvalue = ‘0x’
   SELECT @i = 1
   SELECT @length = DATALENGTH (@binvalue)
   SELECT @hexstring = ‘0123456789ABCDEF’
   WHILE (@i <= @length)
   BEGIN
   DECLARE @tempint int
   DECLARE @firstint int
   DECLARE @secondint int
   SELECT @tempint = CONVERT(int, SUBSTRING(@binvalue,@i,1))
   SELECT @firstint = FLOOR(@tempint/16)
   SELECT @secondint = @tempint – (@firstint*16)
   SELECT @charvalue = @charvalue +
   SUBSTRING(@hexstring, @firstint+1, 1) +
   SUBSTRING(@hexstring, @secondint+1, 1)
   SELECT @i = @i + 1
   ENDSELECT @hexvalue = @charvalue
   GO

   IF OBJECT_ID (’sp_help_revlogin’) IS NOT NULL
   DROP PROCEDURE sp_help_revlogin
   GO
   CREATE PROCEDURE sp_help_revlogin @login_name sysname = NULL AS
   DECLARE @name sysname
   DECLARE @type varchar (1)
   DECLARE @hasaccess int
   DECLARE @denylogin int
   DECLARE @is_disabled int
   DECLARE @PWD_varbinary varbinary (256)
   DECLARE @PWD_string varchar (514)
   DECLARE @SID_varbinary varbinary (85)
   DECLARE @SID_string varchar (514)
   DECLARE @tmpstr varchar (1024)
   DECLARE @is_policy_checked varchar (3)
   DECLARE @is_expiration_checked varchar (3)

   DECLARE @defaultdb sysname

   IF (@login_name IS NULL)
   DECLARE login_curs CURSOR FOR

   SELECT p.sid, p.name, p.type, p.is_disabled, p.default_database_name, l.hasaccess, l.denylogin FROM
   sys.server_principals p LEFT JOIN sys.syslogins l
   ON ( l.name = p.name ) WHERE p.type IN ( ‘S’, ‘G’, ‘U’ ) AND p.name <> ’sa’
   ELSE
   DECLARE login_curs CURSOR FOR

   SELECT p.sid, p.name, p.type, p.is_disabled, p.default_database_name, l.hasaccess, l.denylogin FROM
   sys.server_principals p LEFT JOIN sys.syslogins l
   ON ( l.name = p.name ) WHERE p.type IN ( ‘S’, ‘G’, ‘U’ ) AND p.name = @login_name
   OPEN login_curs

   FETCH NEXT FROM login_curs INTO @SID_varbinary, @name, @type, @is_disabled, @defaultdb, @hasaccess, @denylogin
   IF (@@fetch_status = -1)
   BEGIN
   PRINT ‘No login(s) found.’
   CLOSE login_curs
   DEALLOCATE login_curs
   RETURN -1
   END
   SET @tmpstr = ‘/* sp_help_revlogin script ‘
   PRINT @tmpstr
   SET @tmpstr = ‘** Generated ‘ + CONVERT (varchar, GETDATE()) + ‘ on ‘ + @@SERVERNAME + ‘ */’
   PRINT @tmpstr
   PRINT ”
   WHILE (@@fetch_status <> -1)
   BEGIN
   IF (@@fetch_status <> -2)
   BEGIN
   PRINT ”
   SET @tmpstr = ‘– Login: ‘ + @name
   PRINT @tmpstr
   IF (@type IN ( ‘G’, ‘U’))
   BEGIN — NT authenticated account/group

   SET @tmpstr = ‘CREATE LOGIN ‘ + QUOTENAME( @name ) + ‘ FROM WINDOWS WITH DEFAULT_DATABASE = [' + @defaultdb + ']‘
   END
   ELSE BEGIN — SQL Server authentication
   – obtain password and sid
   SET @PWD_varbinary = CAST( LOGINPROPERTY( @name, ‘PasswordHash’ ) AS varbinary (256) )
   EXEC sp_hexadecimal @PWD_varbinary, @PWD_string OUT
   EXEC sp_hexadecimal @SID_varbinary,@SID_string OUT

   – obtain password policy state
   SELECT @is_policy_checked = CASE is_policy_checked WHEN 1 THEN ‘ON’ WHEN 0 THEN ‘OFF’ ELSE NULL END FROM sys.sql_logins WHERE name = @name
   SELECT @is_expiration_checked = CASE is_expiration_checked WHEN 1 THEN ‘ON’ WHEN 0 THEN ‘OFF’ ELSE NULL END FROM sys.sql_logins WHERE name = @name

   SET @tmpstr = ‘CREATE LOGIN ‘ + QUOTENAME( @name ) + ‘ WITH PASSWORD = ‘ + @PWD_string + ‘ HASHED, SID = ‘ + @SID_string + ‘, DEFAULT_DATABASE = [' + @defaultdb + ']‘

   IF ( @is_policy_checked IS NOT NULL )
   BEGIN
   SET @tmpstr = @tmpstr + ‘, CHECK_POLICY = ‘ + @is_policy_checked
   END
   IF ( @is_expiration_checked IS NOT NULL )
   BEGIN
   SET @tmpstr = @tmpstr + ‘, CHECK_EXPIRATION = ‘ + @is_expiration_checked
   END
   END
   IF (@denylogin = 1)
   BEGIN — login is denied access
   SET @tmpstr = @tmpstr + ‘; DENY CONNECT SQL TO ‘ + QUOTENAME( @name )
   END
   ELSE IF (@hasaccess = 0)
   BEGIN — login exists but does not have access
   SET @tmpstr = @tmpstr + ‘; REVOKE CONNECT SQL TO ‘ + QUOTENAME( @name )
   END
   IF (@is_disabled = 1)
   BEGIN — login is disabled
   SET @tmpstr = @tmpstr + ‘; ALTER LOGIN ‘ + QUOTENAME( @name ) + ‘ DISABLE’
   END
   PRINT @tmpstr
   END

   FETCH NEXT FROM login_curs INTO @SID_varbinary, @name, @type, @is_disabled, @defaultdb, @hasaccess, @denylogin
   END
   CLOSE login_curs
   DEALLOCATE login_curs
   RETURN 0
   GO

3. Preparing mirror server: Make sure the DB is not in use!
   DB Mirroring requires you to restore a backup of the existing db on the mirror side!
4. Preparing mirror DB: When restoring to the mirror site, set it to RESTORE WITH NORECOVERY
5. Setup Mirroring: Pretty straightforward here, right click the db, click properties -> Mirror then click the “Configure Security” button to start the wizard
6. Backup Strategy: Because database mirroring sets the mirror db to be in a perpentual Restoring state, your normal backup jobs won’t work on it. Note this is fixed in SQL Server 2008 maintenance plan, you just need to tick the ignore if not online check box
   Here’s a sample backup script to get you going

   use [master]
   go
   create procedure DailyBackup as
   begin
   declare @BackupPath varchar(300)
   declare @DBName varchar(256)
   declare @RecoveryModel int
   declare @DT varchar(100)
   declare @SQL varchar(4000)

   set @BackupPath=N’D:\backup\’

   DECLARE db_cursor CURSOR FOR
   select [name], [recovery_model]
   from sys.databases
   where state=0 and name not in (‘tempdb’,'model’)
   OPEN db_cursor
   FETCH NEXT FROM db_cursor INTO @DBName, @RecoveryModel

   WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
   BEGIN
   if (@RecoveryModel <> 3)
   begin
   – Backup Transaction Log
   set @DT = CONVERT(CHAR(8), GETDATE(), 112) + ‘_’ + replace(CONVERT(CHAR(8), GETDATE(), 108), ‘:’, ‘_’)
   set @SQL = N’BACKUP LOG [' + @DBName + N'] TO DISK = N”’ + @BackupPath + @DBName + @DT + N’.trn” WITH NOFORMAT, INIT, NAME = N”’ + @DBName + N’ Transaction Log Backup”, SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10′
   print (@SQL)
   exec (@SQL)
   end

   –Backup Database
   set @DT = CONVERT(CHAR(8), GETDATE(), 112) + ‘_’ + replace(CONVERT(CHAR(8), GETDATE(), 108), ‘:’, ‘_’)
   set @SQL = N’BACKUP DATABASE [' + @DBName + N'] TO DISK = N”’ + @BackupPath + @DBName + @DT + N’.bak” WITH NOFORMAT, INIT, NAME = N”’ + @DBName + ‘ Full Backup”, SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10′
   print (@SQL)
   exec (@SQL)

   FETCH NEXT FROM db_cursor INTO @DBName, @RecoveryModel
   END

   CLOSE db_cursor
   DEALLOCATE db_cursor
   end

1. SSH to your NAS
2. Create a folder called packages in your box
   mkdir /mnt/HD_a2/packages
3. Goto the packages folder
   cd /mnt/HD_a2/packages
4. Install uclibc using the 3 commands below
   wget http://www.inreto.de/dns323/fun-plug/0.5/packages/uclibc-0.9.29-7.tgz
   funpkg -i uclibc-0.9.29-7.tgz
   reboot
5. Installing Transmission using the commands below
   wget http://kylek.is-a-geek.org:31337/files/curl-7.18.1.tgz
   wget http://kylek.is-a-geek.org:31337/files/Transmission-1.73-7.tgz
   funpkg -i curl-7.18.1.tgz
   funpkg -i Transmission-1.73-7.tgz

   Note if you have previously installed transmission before, you will need to kill the processes. To do so , run top to list all the running processes, the issue kill [pid] e.g kill 2377 for each of the transmission-daemon running, then run the following 2 commands

   funpkg -I curl-7.18.1.tgz
   funpkg -U Transmission-1.73-7.tgz

   chmod a+x /ffp/start/transmission.sh
   reboot

6. Updating clutch whitelist
   vi /mnt/HD_a2/.transmission-daemon/settings.json

   Edit the line with “rpc-whitelist” to something like “rpc-whitelist”: “127.0.0.1,192.*.*.*”, (assuming 192.*.*.* is your local ip subnet)
   Edit the line with “download-dir” to the download path for your torrents e.g download-dir”: “\/mnt\/HD_a2\/Torrent\/incomplete”
   Edit the line with “blocklist-enabled” to “blocklist-enabled”: 1

7. Access clutch via its url http://[ip of your nas]:9091/
8. Configuring Block Lists
   Goto the transmission block list folder (/mnt/HD_a2/.transmission-daemon/blocklists)
   Create a new file containing the following lines

   rm level1.gz -f
   #wget http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/level1.gz
   wget http://download.m0k.org/transmission/files/level1.gz
   tar -x level1.gz

   Save the file
   chmod a+x update.sh (set it to be executable)
   ./update.sh (run the update script, this will take quite a while)

9. If you want an auto update of the block list, just create a cronjob to run the update script