(Maybe) best practice: Use shared projects in Visual Studio involved with Nuget

I wrote many solutions in Visual Studio. Some of them includes components, which intend to be published to Nuget.

Previously, I wrote these projects directly and publish them to Nuget. This is not a smooth way. Consider this: You have project A need to be published to Nuget. Project B, as well. Project C need to reference project A and B, and also need to be published to Nuget. Project D need to reference C for testing. Obviously, following Nuget standard, the Project C need to reference A by using Nuget Packages instead of the projects of A and B directly. But it seems that there is no called testing mode publishing in Nuget supported. There is no easy way to test your project before publishing to Nuget. Maybe you need to change the references in Project C and D repeatedly, switching mode between testing and publishing.

Recently, Shared Project support added to Visual Studio. Now I use a better way, IMHO, in developing such a solution mentioned above.

  • Create a shared project for each project need to be published to Nuget.
  • Put all codes into shared project instead of original one.
  • Create a project for publishing to Nuget, reference the shared project related. — Project N
  • Create a project for testing, reference the shared project related. — Project T

If your Nuget projects need more references which will be published to Nuget from this solution, add them from Nuget to the Project N, and add them as reference from their Project T to this Project T.

All Project Ns will only be used for publishing to Nuget. As well as all Project Ts will be used for testing. They share the same code but the different source for referencing.

TFS 2015 Upgrading

There are 2 things you should have in mind about TFS 2015 Upgrading.

1 The database upgrading process will cost much more time than upgrading among Update package of TFS 2013.

2 The dedicated SharePoint integration package is removed and M$ did a shit test again. If you, like me, installed TFS on a server other than SharePoint cluster, now you have to install the whole TFS on all SharePoint servers. After the installation, the upgrading wizard will be popped up but it will failed due to no database can be found. You have to choose to install SharePoint integration role yourself. And after that, you will know that TFS SharePoint integration package 2013 will NOT and NOT ABLE to be removed, lol, just another piece of crap.

A way to run nearly all functions of dotNet from SQL Server

Last night, I got a case to write a function in SQL Server 2005 to support the user account and password check against Active Directory. The user requirement is quite clear:

  • Create a scalar-valued function named LDAPUserCheck;
  • Parameter @username nvarchar(MAX) for user name to check;
  • Parameter @password nvarchar(MAX) for password matching the username specified;
  • Return bit 1 if succeeded, or 0 for all other reasons.

After a digging, I found that LDAP password authentication is not supported directly by SQL Server. But SQLCLR is a way to build the native dotnet program into SQL Server. In a new created SQLCLR project in VS 2005, I realized it’s unable to add the reference System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement, which is required by running the code for Active Directory authentication. But a Web Service is a choice.

My steps to achieve that:

1 Create and deploy a Web Service for the authentication check.

1.1 Create a Web Service project.

1.2 Add System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement as a reference.

1.3 Add a setting DomainName as string for storing the domain name.

1.4 Add a service like this:

    public class LDAPAuthentication : System.Web.Services.WebService
    {
        static string domainName = Settings.Default.DomainName;

        [WebMethod]
        public bool Check(string userName, string password)
        {
            using (PrincipalContext pc = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain, domainName))
            {
                // validate the credentials
                bool isValid = pc.ValidateCredentials(userName, password);
                return isValid;
            }
        }
    }

1.5 Deploy this service and use a application pool running by a domain user. This user should be added to IIS_WPG group in Windows Server 2003.

2 Create a SQLCLR project to call the Web Service.

2.1 Create a SQLCLR project in Visual Studio 2005.

2.2 Add a Web Service reference. It’s named as LDAP in my project.

2.3 Add a User Defined Functions.

    [Microsoft.SqlServer.Server.SqlFunction]
    public static SqlBoolean LDAPUserCheck(
        SqlString username, SqlString password)
    {
        using (LDAPAuthentication.LDAP.LDAPAuthentication service = new LDAPAuthentication.LDAP.LDAPAuthentication())
        {
            if (service.Check(username.ToString(), password.ToString()))
            {
                return SqlBoolean.True;
            }
            else
            {
                return SqlBoolean.False;
            }
        }
    }

2.4 Set Permission Level to External in Database page of project setting.

2.5 Build this project to get the dll files. In my case, these files are named LDAPAuthentication.dll and LDAPAuthentication.XmlSerializers.dll.

3 Deploy this project into SQL Server 2005.

3.1 Enable the CLR support in SQL Server 2005 by running this code:

sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO

sp_configure 'clr enabled', 1;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO

sp_configure 'show advanced options', 0;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO

3.2 Create a database for storing this function. Or, you can use any existed database as well. In my case, I created a database “tester”.

3.3 Set trustworthy on this database by running:

ALTER DATABASE [tester] SET trustworthy ON

3.4 Copy the 2 dll files created in step 2 to this server. In my case, these are stored in C:\SQLCLR folder.

3.5 Create assemblies in SQL Server by running:

create assembly [LDAPAuthentication] from 'C:\SQLCLR\LDAPAuthentication.dll' with permission_set = external_access
create assembly [LDAPAuthentication.XmlSerializers] from 'C:\SQLCLR\LDAPAuthentication.XmlSerializers.dll' with permission_set = external_access

3.6 Create function to run the method we’ve created in VS 2005:

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[LDAPUserCheck](@username [nvarchar](4000), @password [nvarchar](4000))
RETURNS [bit] WITH EXECUTE AS CALLER
AS 
EXTERNAL NAME [LDAPAuthentication].[UserDefinedFunctions].[LDAPUserCheck]

Now everything is done. You can call this function like all others created by SQL. Run this for test.

select dbo.LDAPUserCheck('myusername','mypassword')

 

Solved: Why Linq Where.FirstOrDefault is faster than use FirstOrDefault with condition on an array?

Hi all.

 

Why applying “.Where(condition).FirstOrDefault()” is much faster than “.FirstOrDefault(condition) when it’s applied on an array?

 

Answer: While calling method Where() on an Array or a List, it’s optimized to use the enumerator of the source directly. But FirstOrDefault(), which doesn’t have this mechanism, runs the virtual method version from IEnumerator.GetEnumerator().

Special thanks to Iris Sakura.

Official feedback about removing orphan collection in TFS 2013

Continued from: Remove orphan collection item without related database in TFS 2013 with Update 2

 

It’s announced that this will be fixed in Update 3 of TFS by Microsoft Officially.

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/874523/delete-a-collection-without-related-database-connected-vs2013u2

 

A workaround, editing database directly, is provided also.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/cceec4ba-1712-4905-9e7b-8669bf81880f/damaged-project-collection-on-tfs-2013-no-solution-to-delete-it-from-server?forum=tfsadmin

But you should keep in mind that editing database directly is dangerous and will lose all supports from Microsoft.

Remove orphan collection item without related database in TFS 2013 with Update 2

Last week, the Configuration Manager in our company tested to create a collection in Team Foundation Server (TFS for short) 2013 with Update 2. After test, the database of this collection is deleted directly from SqlServer by mistake and there is no backup for it. So an orphan item for this collection is still existed there and have to be removed manually.

 

First, I try to remove it from Team Foundation Server Administration Console (TfsMgmt.exe). It failed in detach process.

Then, I try to do it with TFSconfig.exe in console mode. I’m pretty sure that’s work in previous version of TFS, maybe 2012. But in 2013 with Update 2, it failed the same as TfsMgmt.

I tried to use a database from another collection by renaming it as the deleted one, or even use a database created with another TFS instance with the same collection name, all failed.

At that time, I turned to MSDN forum. One MVP provided some tables within Tfs_Configuration database. Some deleting operations should be taken there. After that, the collection is removed from the TfsMgmt but it still can be found in Visual Studio at client side.

Finally, I detached all collections and redeployed the whole TFS instance. That works as predictable.

 

If somebody falls into the same jam, the detachment and redeployment is the only way to correct it, unless you have the backup of that deleted database.

 

Related: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/3a072d51-298a-48b5-a57e-301f5ef2670f/how-to-delete-a-collection-without-related-database-connected-tfs-2013-update-2?forum=tfsgeneral

C#: Split a Distinguished Name of Active Directory into array of string

class DistinguishedNameSplit
{
    static string[] hexCodes = new string[] { "0""1""2""3""4""5""6""7""8""9""a""A""b""B""c""C""d""D""e""E""f""F" };
 
    public static List<string> Split(string distinguishedName)
    {
        List<string> pool = new List<string>();
        StringBuilder working = new StringBuilder();
        string hexHigh = "";
        MachineStatus status = MachineStatus.A;
        int index = 0;
        int indexMax = distinguishedName.Length - 1;
 
        while (index <= indexMax)
        {
            string value = distinguishedName.Substring(index, 1);
            switch (status)
            {
                case MachineStatus.A:
                    if (value == ",")
                    {
                        pool.Add(working.ToString());
                        working.Clear();
                    }
                    else if (value == "\"")
                    {
                        working.Append("\"");
                        status = MachineStatus.B;
                    }
                    else if (value == "\\")
                    {
                        status = MachineStatus.C;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        working.Append(value);
                    }
                    break;
                case MachineStatus.B:
                    if (value == "\"")
                    {
                        working.Append("\"");
                        status = MachineStatus.A;
                    }
                    else if (value == "\\")
                    {
                        status = MachineStatus.E;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        working.Append(value);
                    }
                    break;
                case MachineStatus.C:
                    if (value == "," || value == "\"" || value == "\\")
                    {
                        working.Append(value);
                        status = MachineStatus.A;
                    }
                    else if (hexCodes.Contains(value))
                    {
                        hexHigh = value;
                        status = MachineStatus.D;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        throw new ArgumentException("The distinguished name specified is not typed legally.");
                    }
                    break;
                case MachineStatus.D:
                    if (hexCodes.Contains(value))
                    {
                        working.Append((char)Convert.ToByte(String.Format("{0}{1}", hexHigh, value), 16));
                        status = MachineStatus.A;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        throw new ArgumentException("The distinguished name specified is not typed legally.");
                    }
                    break;
                case MachineStatus.E:
                    if (value == "," || value == "\"" || value == "\\")
                    {
                        working.Append(value);
                        status = MachineStatus.B;
                    }
                    else if (hexCodes.Contains(value))
                    {
                        hexHigh = value;
                        status = MachineStatus.F;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        throw new ArgumentException("The distinguished name specified is not typed legally.");
                    }
                    break;
                case MachineStatus.F:
                    if (hexCodes.Contains(value))
                    {
                        working.Append((char)Convert.ToByte(String.Format("{0}{1}", hexHigh, value), 16));
                        status = MachineStatus.B;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        throw new ArgumentException("The distinguished name specified is not typed legally.");
                    }
                    break;
            }
            index++;
        }
 
        if (status == MachineStatus.A)
        {
            pool.Add(working.ToString());
            return pool;
        }
        else
        {
            throw new ArgumentException("The distinguished name specified is not ended correctly.");
        }
    }
 
    enum MachineStatus
    {
        A, B, C, D, E, F
    }
}