How to disable assert dialogs while testing (.net)

Why would you want to do that in the first place? Let’s say you have a complex (long) test you want to run in your application, so you decided to start it before going home so it’ll be ready tomorrow morning with the results. What would happen if when get to you computer the next morning you find an assert dialog waiting for you to “Abort”, “Retry” or “Ignore”? Believe me, it is frustrating and irritable!
I had a few “alternative ways” to ignore those asserts (http://twitpic.com/qvecx) but Willy told me the correct way to do it.
All you have to do is adding the following to your .exe.config file:

<system.diagnostics>
    <assert assertuienabled="false"/>
</system.diagnostics>

That code tells the framework that you don’t want to show a message box when a “Debug.Assert” is called, which is exactly what I wanted.


So, since my test is a msbuild script all I had to do is adding the above “code” in the msbuild.exe.config and now my tests runs smooth and the results are ready, waiting for me :)


More info on the assert tag here.

Mi first useful Azure application

I’ve been plying around with Windows Azure for over a year now, I started with the CTP Microsoft showed at PDC 2008 and played with SQL Azure (FKA: SDS) and Windows Azure ever since.
But today I uploaded my first useful application. I’m currently working the on Genexus deployment project which includes being able to deploy Genexus-generated applications to every supported platform (including of course Windows Azure). More on that in a future post.
So, to deploy an application to Windows Azure programmatically, you have to tell Azure where your package is (by its url) so the best choice is to upload you package to the you Azure storage account. But the storage does not have a nice UI, so I thought first on creating an application to actually see what’s in my storage account and then decided to make it a web application, and allow other to use it.
I know, it does not have a great user interface. I’m not good at it, and I didn’t care for it at all for this version. But I’ll promise I’ll add some functionality and improve the user experience.
If you want to check it out go to http://storageexplorer.cloudapp.net http://azurestorage.azurewebsites.net enter your account name and your access key and see what’s in your storage account. (Read only, for now!)
So I’m happy to announce that this application not only “Works on my Machine” but it also does on the Windows Azure platform :)

Edit: now with improved UI :)

Ode to The Ramones

Google just released a new experimental programming language called Go, and they had the brilliant idea on titling their introductory post as The Ramones did with their songs… “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!” … brilliant :)

Read more about it from the official blog at http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/11/hey-ho-lets-go.html

Listen to the Ramones here:

Internal Error 500 returned by IIS7 hosted WCF services

Here's an issue I had for quite a long time.
For some (unknown at the time) reason the server was returning a "500 - Internal Server error" whenever an exception was thrown.
Even the message on the exception was an html document (pasted below), so who was modifying my exceptions? it turned out to be the IIS itself due to some configuration settings.
There's a "feature" which avoids the IIS to send the real exception to the client sending instead a more "friendly" one.
So, how do you change that? (keep in mind this is IIS 7.0 and above)
Take a look at this great post (where I got the solution from) and follow step 2) of "Enable IIS7 detailed errors".

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"/>
<title>500 - Internal server error.</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
body{margin:0;font-size:.7em;font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;background:#EEEEEE;}
fieldset{padding:0 15px 10px 15px;} 
h1{font-size:2.4em;margin:0;color:#FFF;}
h2{font-size:1.7em;margin:0;color:#CC0000;} 
h3{font-size:1.2em;margin:10px 0 0 0;color:#000000;} 
#header{width:96%;margin:0 0 0 0;padding:6px 2% 6px 2%;font-family:"trebuchet MS", Verdana, sans-serif;color:#FFF;
background-color:#555555;}
#content{margin:0 0 0 2%;position:relative;}
.content-container{background:#FFF;width:96%;margin-top:8px;padding:10px;position:relative;}
-->
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="header"><h1>Server Error</h1></div>
<div id="content">
 <div class="content-container"><fieldset>
  <h2>500 - Internal server error.</h2>
  <h3>There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed.</h3>
 </fieldset></div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Great simple explanation on Windows Azure

During the last GeneXus International Meeting held in Montevideo, I had the chance to talk for a few minutes with Steve Marx from the Windows Azure team. Milano and I were telling him what we expect to do with GeneXus and the Windows Azure platform.

The first scenario is having a one-click deployment to the cloud (Windows Azure platform) of the GeneXus generated applications. Since the SQL Azure is now a relational database (good old SQL Server) our reorganization programs can generate the tables in the cloud. Also, our applications are 100% compatible with the Azure environment so you could upload you application to the Azure platform today.

The other scenario is running GeneXus Server from the Azure platform. In this scenario we still have a “little” work to do. So we were asking Steve about the worker roles since we want to be able to specify and generate in the Azure platform and I have doubts about what could actually run in this “cloud”, so Steve explained it to me in a great simple way. He said, imagine I have a Windows Server 2008 installed out of the box with the .net framework 3.5 and all the latest service packs. Everything you could put on a portable USB drive and run from there will run on the Azure platform. He added, everything that needs a setup wizard, writing on the registry, and stuff won’t work.

As I said, great yet simple explanation of what you could run on the Azure platform.