The easiest way to do this is multiply by 1, but if it is a (n)varchar data type, it is a little more challenging.
This was the query I had to run:
DECLARE @insurancenumber nvarchar(100),@charactertopurge nvarchar(1) SET @charactertopurge='0' SET @insurancenumber='00PK102947' SELECT @GMPI=GMPI from Patient.dbo.PatientAlias where AliasField=substring(@insurancenumber, patindex('%[^'+@charactertopurge+']%',@insurancenumber), len(@insurancenumber))
This is the tenth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release.
In today’s blog post I’m going to cover a small but really nice improvement to code intellisense with VS 2010 – which is its ability to better filter type and member code completion. This enables you to more easily find and use APIs when writing code.
To help illustrate this intellisense improvements coming with VS 2010, let’s start by doing a simple scenario in VS 2008 where we want to write some code to enable an editing scenario with a GridView control.
We might start off by typing “GridView1.Edit” to bring up intellisense to see what Edit members are available on the control. Doing this with VS 2008 brings up the intellisense drop-down and filters the current location in the dropdown to the members that start with the word “Edit”:
This is great if the method/property/event we want to work with starts with “Edit” – but doesn’t really help us if the “Edit” member we are looking for starts with something else (for example: the “RowEditing” event or the “SetEditRow()” helper method). We have to either manually scroll up and down looking for the other edit members, or pull up the object browser or help system to find them.
Let’s now try out the same scenario with VS 2010. When we type “GridView1.Edit” within VS 2010 we’ll find that the EditIndex property is still highlighted by default. But the intellisense list has also been filtered so that it enables you to quickly locate all other members that have the word “Edit” anywhere in them:
This allows us to quickly see all of the edit related methods/properties/events and more quickly find what we are looking for.
Searching for Keywords
This new intellisense filtering feature of VS 2010 is useful for searching for any member – regardless of what word it starts with. For example, if we want to enable paging on a datagrid and can’t remember how to-do it, we could just type “GridView1.Paging” and it would automatically filter out everything but members that have the word paging. Notice below how no members on the GridView class actually start with the word “Paging” – but I am still finding the two members that do have paging in them later in their names:
Searching for Types
This new intellisense filtering capability of VS 2010 is also useful for quickly finding classes and types. For example, when we type “List” to declare a variable, the editor will provide automatic filtering to show all types that have the word “List” somewhere in them (including IList<> and SortedList<> – which do not start with List):
This makes it much easier to find type names you can’t entirely remember – without having to resort to searching through the object browser and/or using help documentation.
Pascal Case Intellisense
The .NET Framework naming guidelines specify that type and member names should be “Pascal Cased” by default. This means that each word in a type or member should start with a capitalized letter (for example: PageIndexChanged).
VS 2010’s intellisense filtering support now enables you to take advantage of this to quickly find and filter methods based on their pascal naming pattern. For example, if we typed “GridView1.PIC” VS 2010 would filter to show us the members that have PIC in their name, as well as those members which have a pascal cased name where the word segments start with that letter sequence:
Notice above how PIC caused both “PageIndexChanged” and “PageIndexChanging” to show up. This saves us a few keystrokes when resolving either member or type names.
I think you’ll find that the new intellisense filtering approach in VS 2010 makes it easier to quickly find and use classes and members when writing code. You can take advantage of it with both VB and C#.
Hope this helps,
Scott
P.S. In addition to blogging, I have recently been using Twitter to-do quick posts and share links. You can follow me on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/scottgu (@scottgu is my twitter name)
Microsoft Support have just a published a helpful support article discussing some of the general guidelines that need to be followed when applying BizTalk Server Hotfixes, applicable to all versions from BizTalk Server 2004 onwards.
The article covers some of the more salient points we need to remember as BizTalk Adminstrators, including:
Considerations when installing Hotfixes on […]
I’ve just committed some updates changes to my KeywordClassifier extension for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.
I had already worked around some problems my custom classifier was causing with Beta 2 related to it’s use of a recursive invocation of the classifier services, but @noahsmark proposed a better way to get this done in Beta 2 […]
Grab a look at the SDK – here – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd776256.aspx and
interestingly the BDC (now – Business Data Connectors) and BCS (Business Connectivity
Services) are the enhanced former 2007 BDC.
BCS = http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556826(office.14).aspx
I’ve got lots to talk about and show but where to start.maybe “once there was a developer”
🙂
Stay tuned.
Mick.
I have meant to write a blog post about client certificates in a development environment for a while now, as every time I come to implement it I forget a step somewhere. There are resources online for a number of the steps below, but I wanted to consolidate that information along with my own steps into a single place that I can use as a reference. This may also be useful to others, hence why I am making a blog post rather than file it away in my mesh repository somewhere.
So, what am I trying to do here? Well, I would like to create a WCF service that utilises SSL and requires that clients use a certificate for authentication in a development environment where I do not have any certificates supplied to me. I am setting this up in a Windows 2008 environment (so IIS 7) with .NET 3.5. The whole process will involve the following steps:
To use chain trust validation during development you need to create a self-signed root CA and place it in the Trusted Root Certification Authority store. The certificate used by WCF is then created and signed by the root self-signed certificate and installed in the LocalMachine store.
Makecert -n “CN=MyRootCA” -r -sv MyRootCA.pvk mYRootCA.cer
The certificate that will be created using this certificate authority will need to have the CA installed on both the client and the server, as it will be used to verify the certificate.
You now want to create the certificate for the service on the server and the following steps will do this. Once completed you will see the certificate via the certificates snap-in of MMC and browsing to the following location: Certificates (Local Computer) -> Personal -> Certificates
makecert -sk <KeyName> -iv MyRootCA.pvk -n “CN=<MachineName>” -ic MyRootCA.cer -sr localmachine -ss my -sky exchange -pe
We now want to configure the website that is to host the WCF service to use the SSL certificate we just created. This step assumes you have already created a website for HTTPS.
Now we want to export the certificate that will be used on the client(s). At the end of this step you should have a new file created with a pfx extension.
Now we need to import the certificate we just exported onto the client(s). You should have already imported the certificate authority in step 2, but if not make sure you do so at this point. Note that we are using the current user here, it just happens to be the way we have things configured later on. You may have a different setup here.
This is the WCF service that we are hosting and requiring authentication for. We happen to be using basicHttpBinding here, but it could be something else
<services>
<service behaviorConfiguration=”MyBehaviour” name=”MyService”>
<endpoint name=”MyEndPoint” address=”” binding=”basicHttpBinding” bindingConfiguration=”ClientCertificateTransportSecurity” contract=”MyContract” />
<!–<endpoint address=”mex” binding=”mexHttpsBinding” contract=”IMetadataExchange” />–>
</service>
</services>
<behaviors>
<serviceBehaviors>
<behavior name=”MyBehaviour”>
<serviceMetadata httpsGetEnabled=”true” />
<serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults=”true” />
</behavior>
</serviceBehaviors>
</behaviors>
<bindings>
<basicHttpBinding>
<binding name=”ClientCertificateTransportSecurity”>
<security mode=”Transport”>
<transport clientCredentialType=”Certificate” />
</security>
</binding>
</basicHttpBinding>
</bindings>
If using custom app
Make sure you have the following in your configuration file.
<system.serviceModel>
<client>
<endpoint address=”https://myServer/myService.svc”
binding=”basicHttpBinding”
bindingConfiguration=”ClientCertificateTransportSecurity”
contract=”MyContract”
name=”MyEndPoint”
behaviorConfiguration=”ClientCertificateCredential” />
</client>
<bindings>
<basicHttpBinding>
<binding name=” ClientCertificateTransportSecurity”>
<security mode=”Transport”>
<transport clientCredentialType=”Certificate” />
</security>
</binding>
</basicHttpBinding>
</bindings>
<behaviors>
<endpointBehaviors>
<behavior name=”ClientCertificateCredential”>
<clientCredentials>
<clientCertificate findValue=”myThumbprint”
storeLocation=”CurrentUser”
x509FindType=”FindByThumbprint” />
</clientCredentials>
</behavior>
</endpointBehaviors>
</behaviors>
</system.serviceModel>
Where myThumbprint is available from the certificate
If using a browser to view the service
Internet Explorer
Should just work, a popup should appear that asks you to specify the certificate to pass
FireFox
Fiddler
You may want to use fiddler to examine what is going on. When you have fiddler open you will receive a message saying “The server [your server] requires a client certificate. Please save a client certificate in the following location”. Pretty self explanatory. You will need to export your certificate from MMC certificates snap-in, certificates -> personal -> certificates but this time do not export the private key, just export as a DER encoded certificate, copy and rename to the folder/name that fiddler wanted you to.
“There was an error downloading ‘https://MachineName/servicefolder/Service.svc’. The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel”
“The SSL settings for the service ‘None’ does not match those of the IIS ‘Ssl, SslNegotiateCert, SslRequireCert, SslMapCert’”
I’ve now fixed all remaining issues with my Current Line Highlighting extension for Visual Studio 2010. Besides fixing all build issues, I started running into issues where IWpfTextViewLineCollection.GetMarkerGeometry() was returning null when the text snapshot was empty (like an empty line).
I reworked the code to avoid this call and instead manually create a new geometry […]
If you redistribute or require .NET 4 for your applications, you now have the option of installing .NET 4 Client Profile – a subset of the Framework intended for client applications.
Even better, Client Profile includes almost all pieces of Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation! The few exceptions are assemblies oriented around web-hosting and WF3 components; I’ll get to these limitations later in this post. First, I’ll describe how you can start taking advantage of the Client Profile right away, and explain what’s included from the perspective of WF and WCF. For more details about other parts of the Client Profile, refer to this introductory post by Jossef Goldberg.
An overriding theme of our efforts has been to ensure that applications running in .NET 3 or 3.5 remain unaffected when switched over to running in .NET 4. Also, developers with projects building in .NET 3 or .NET 3.5 looking to move to .NET 4 are also not affected (and in some cases, only minimally affected) when rolling their projects forward.
So if Client Profile doesn’t interest you, relax – it’s a choice. Also, note that if you install .NET 4 Full, .NET 4 Client Profile is a fully contained subset of .NET 4 Full – so anything that’s a part of .NET 4 Client Profile is a part of .NET 4 Full.
To enable your application to target the Client Profile, you just need to change the “Target Framework” setting in your project like so:
Applications built and targeted this way will be able to run on machines that have the .NET 4 Client Profile installed, as well as those with .NET 4 Full. These projects will not let you build successfully when referencing classes that exist in only .NET 4 Full. On the other hand, applications targeted at .NET 4 Full will be unable to run on machines that only have the .NET 4 Client Profile installed on them, and you’ll get an error message directing you to download and install the Full framework:
To maximize what you could exploit in the Client Profile, we have refactored two assemblies. Each of these assemblies is now effectively split into two, one existing in the Client Profile and another that can be referenced from only .NET Full projects:
1. We’ve moved the JSON serialization classes from System.ServiceModel.Web.dll to System.Runtime.Serialization.dll. These serialization classes are being type-forwarded, so if you have any existing applications, they’ll continue to run just fine. System.Runtime.Serialization.dll will be installed with.NET 4 Client Profile, while System.ServiceModel.Web.dll will come with only .NET 4 Full.
2. We’ve moved and type-forwarded some classes related to hosting and activation from System.ServiceModel.dll to a new assembly, System.ServiceModel.Activation.dll. The former assembly is a part of .NET 4 Client Profile, while the latter is in .NET 4 Full.
Like I mentioned earlier, almost all assemblies we shipped with .NET 3 and .NET 3.5 are a part of the new .NET 4 Client Profile. In addition, almost all assemblies we are shipping for the first time in .NET 4 – including all WF4 assemblies – are a part of .NET 4 Client Profile. A comprehensive list of what’s in the Client Profile and what’s not will be published on MSDN.
So what’s not included in .NET 4 Client Profile? Here is a list of the main pieces, but this is not meant to be exhaustive. If your applications depend on anything from this set of assemblies, your projects should target .NET 4 Full:
– WF3 in .NET 4: This includes System.Workflow.Runtime.dll, System.Workflow.Activities.dll, System.Workflow.ComponentModel.dll, System.WorkflowServices.dll, and other related SQL files, performance counters, and tools.
– WF4 and WCF Hosting assemblies: System.Xaml.Hosting.dll, System.ServiceModel.WasHosting.dll, System.ServiceModel.Web.dll, System.ServiceModel.Activation.dll, WsatConfig.exe, and related tools