Shedding Some Light

Dead as a doornail. Less useful than a pet rock. Internet Information Services (IIS) v5.1 on my Windows XP Professional SP2 (all the latest patches) development box has decided to take a holiday break. Normally this would not be a big deal, but I use it every darn single day to access the OpenWiki running on my machine and Fog Creek’s FogBugz for my bug tracking.

I am almost positive it started with the latest Windows Update. All of a sudden I was getting these “HTTP 403.9 – Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected” errors from IIS when I accessed FogBugz. I checked this error in Google and have all the proper settings in IIS. If I ran IISRESET the problem would go away for a short period of time, then the error would come back. Huge aggravation, but I could still get to my information.

I sent in a support ticket to Fog Creek. They had me follow the documentation on the their handy support site (I already found this before submitting the support ticket), but unfortunately all my settings for IIS and user IDs were just fine. The last instructions were to reinstall FogBugz. I did and now IIS is completely dead. Grrrrreat!

I now get back a completely blank browser when I hit any of the Web site home pages on my machine. The world wide web still works, but all the sites on my machine are nothing. The pages are there and I can use the IIS applet and the Computer Management applet to access the IIS Service, but it will not serve a page.

Running IISRESET now displays this:

Internet services successfully stopped
Attempting start…
Restart attempt failed.
IIS Admin Service is disabled

Looking inside the MMC services, the IIS Admin shows it is started and same with the dependencies. If I use MMC to restart IIS I get “Unexpected error: 0x8ffe2740, Remote Procedure Call Security Account Manager.” (when are errors ever expected??)

I found nothing on the usually very helpful Microsoft Knowledgebase. Googling was not much help either. I did find a couple of interesting Developer Help sites which tease you with alleged expertise, but they want high subscription rates and I am not sure of the quality of the people even monitoring the forums. I have read several threads on forums and they typically die without any posted resolution.

Fog Creek is telling me to reinstall IIS. I thought I would check with the real world experts first. Anyone got a fix for my bind?

If IIS needs to be reinstalled, what is the impact to my current configuration of Web sites I am running (like the Wiki and FogBugz which are both classic ASP apps, and my test configuration for my Web sites I host with ISPs)?

Have I mentioned I hate software when it goes bad? Why can’t things just work together in the sandbox?

In Andrew’s The FoxShow #34 podcast he mentioned my frustration with DBFs I posted as “DBFs cause hair loss”. He noted in his show how my views broke when I changed the structure of my table. This was not correct. Breaking views is something that never, ever happens to me when I change DBF table structures.

My frustration post was about the DBF structure not matching what the DBC thought it should be. The DBC contains metadata about all the DBF columns (and much more). This is how VFP determines the mismatch. There is only one way I know to accidentally cause error 1984. You can copy a different set of DBC files (DBC/DCX/DCT) or a different set of DBF files (DBF/CDX/FPT) into the appropriate folders. This would cause the mismatch between the DBF and the DBC. I guess something programmatically could go wrong. I can see this problem occurring if you issue an ALTER TABLE, and between the changing of the DBF and the update to the DBC the power goes out or VFP crashes. I think this possibility is extremely low. No matter how it happens – it is a frustrating error.

The view problem Andrew mentioned is fairly common. So how can I claim my views never break when I change table structures? It happens to everyone right? No. The simple solution is to never write views which have the asterisk as the fields clause. You see, the view with an asterisk tells VFP you want all columns, so in the DBC the columns are specifically listed when the view is saved. If you change the table structure and do not modify the view, the DBC still only knows about the original list of columns, not the new ones added or the ones you removed.

Every view I create has the individual columns specified in the view (the ViewEditor Professional helps with this via the columns to clipboard feature). It does mean I have a little extra maintenance when I change table structures, but the trade off is well worth it to me. If you use Stonefield Database Toolkit (SDT) to maintain your table structures it automatically validates the views and updates the DBC so this problem does not bite you in the behind. Either way works great. I use SDT for reindexing and updating the structures in production all the time, but prefer xCase for data modeling and table structure changes.

So Visual FoxPro developers have at least two different ways to code views and not have them break. I would not doubt if there are more.

(Updated: Spoiler Alert)

Two weeks ago I predicted Trump would hire both of the finalists on this season’s The Apprentice. Tonight he was on the verge of hiring Rebecca after he hired Randal. He asked Randal if he thought he should also hire Rebecca. After talking up Rebecca each week and winning as a team, Randal selfishly noted there should only be one apprentice. Mr. Trump – you blew it by not following your gut.

Randal showed his true colors by influencing Trump to not hire Rebecca. Mr. Alleged Nice Guy turned out to be Mr. Backstabber. Shocking? Not in the least, after all it is all business, right? Disappointing since I thought Randal was a good guy.

The reason I watch The Apprentice is not the reality TV hoopla. I watch it to learn more about business from people who are successful. It is one of my personal philosophies: surround yourself with successful and smart people and learn how they became successful. Each week Trump provides some wisdom and I usually learn something or reaffirm something I already know. This week he broke one of his own rules about following your gut. All good business people follow the their instincts. This was a big mistake on his part..

If Trump is smart he will correct this and hire Rebecca anyway, but I doubt it.

I get the FoxPro Advisor Alert each week. This is an email summary of previous and upcoming articles I can look forward to reading. A few alerts ago I noticed Advisor is changing the name of the magazine to Advisor Guide to Microsoft Visual FoxPro. From what I understand, the change is coming with the January issue.

Interesting. Why would a magazine change its name after more than a decade of publishing? Well according to the Advisor Alert:

“To better tell the world what we do, the new name of FoxPro Advisor is ADVISOR GUIDE to MICROSOFT VISUAL FOXPRO — same publication, new name, continuing Advisor Media’s 20 years providing expert advice on Fox software.”

Darn, I was hoping for a new and improved publication. I still enjoy reading FoxPro Advisor each month, but it is getting thinner and thinner. I understand all the reasons why (just count the amount of advertising done in the magazine each month and look at the subscriber numbers), but I want more content. The magazine use to be double the size and 50% less expensive.

I also know the reality the Internet has played on the print publishing world. The instant availability of material via blogs, wikis, and developer Web sites is much faster to market than the 3 month lead time many publications face. I am sure this is why Advisor has their email alerts, have revamped their content on their Web site, and have made electronic access part of the subscription (as FoxTalk has for years).

Don’t get me wrong. The authors are good, the material is valuable, and I still easily justify the subscription. I just want more! It is my hope more Visual FoxPro developers subscribe to all FoxPro publications. It is a simple economic reality. The more subscribers, the more vendors will be willing to advertise because a larger audience is available for their ads. This means Advisor will have a bigger budget, and can pay authors to write more and print more pages. So we all would win.

Good luck Advisor – I hope you take this opportunity to improve your magazine.

If you are not subscribing to both Advisor Guide to Microsoft Visual FoxPro and FoxTalk 2.0, you are missing out on some excellent reading, ideas, and concepts.

A friend of mine emailed me today asking for sources of what’s new in VFP from an end user’s perpective (as in user interface issues). He has not upgraded since VFP 6, and is finally persuaded by the reporting features in VFP 9 to make the jump. My answer was fairly simple: read the Help file. Unfortunately he does not have the Help file for 7 and 8. I also mentioned the What’s New books from Hentzenwerke.

So I spent some time reviewing the Help files and going through the What’s New sections and documenting user interface feature improvements and enhancements. Quite a list I sent…

VFP 7.0

1) Implements: hooking into events happening in other applications.
2) Icons on menus
3) Hot tracking command buttons
4) Easier row highlighting in Grids
5) Wordwrapping in grid headers

VFP 8.0

1) Wordwrapping ToolTipText and longer tips (bumped from 255 to 4095 characters)
2) Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End to move to top and bottom of grid
3) Updated Windows dialogs for open and save when running on Windows 2000 and XP.
4) Grid column autosizing (one or all, very similar to Excel).
5) Better control over the CommandButton position graphics
6) Tab orientation on pageframes (top, bottom, left or right)
7) Hyperlink support in text and editboxes.
XP Themes
9) Easier and more flexible image support (animated GIF files and other formats, rotation and flipping)
10) Docking forms
11) Grids as listboxes
12) Better graphic performance on Terminal Services and CITRIX
13) Change background color on CommandButtons
14) Images in grid column headers
15) Suppressing the data related messages in StatusBar
16) Hiding columns in grid (not just taking the width to zero
17) Support for XP style icons

VFP 9.0

1) Field Tips in grid and BROWSE
2) Anchoring – far less need to handle code in the form resize event
3) Checkboxes and Option groups support wordwrapping
4) Better image/text alignment on CommandButtons
5) You can hide captions on CommandButtons, OptionGroups, and CheckBoxes (allowing for hotkeys to be supported without text)
6) Grids support Rushmore which makes them faster to surf
7) Label rotation
Better Theme backgrounding for labels
9) Toolbars can show and hide separator objects
10) Textbox controls have autocomplete feature available (like Internet Explorer address bar)
11) Updated InputMask/Format for controls
12) Reports – much better previewer, more control and events
13) Better printer dialogs for setting printer properties SYS(1037)
14) DisplayOrientation if users have TabletPC
15) Windows EventBinding so your apps can respond to events in the Operating System

Now I might have missed some things. If I have, pass them along in the comments and I will forward them to my friend. What are your favorites?

I am sitting here in the vast White Light Computing corporate office today working away on various tasks I have to get done. My cell phone rings with “unavailable”. Normally I avoid the taking calls from “unavailable”. But one of my clients does have caller id blocked on their phones and I thought maybe it was them. Wrong…

The individual on the other end of the line is Gary from Domain Registry Support. He was really glad to get in touch with me because there is some emergency information he needs to send me based on changes to my domain. He rattles off some verification information to certify who I am and to sound official. It smelled bad right from the beginning. He notes my fax number registered is incorrect on the domain information records. I ask him for the number and he hesitates and then spits out a number which was bogus. I tell him I never registered a fax number after he lies to me. What a bunch of baloney. He demands a fax number. It is an emergency. I tell him I don’t use one (I hate fax machines… after all it is hardware {g}).

I tell him to mail me the information since he already confirmed my address. He refuses since this emergency change is happening in the next 24 hours and fax is the only technology available for instant communications. Guess he never heard of email. I get his name and number and note I will call him back after I confirm with my domain registration company that there is an emergency change coming down.

The folks at GoDaddy were great. They inform me of this scam going on where this company scares people into sending them money and not to do business with them, unless of course I want to move my domain over to the scammers. I know I have had snail mail in the past, which looks very official from domain scammers, but I do not recall getting a phone call.

So Chuck from GoDaddy offers me the “privacy option” for my domain. This is an add on to my domain registration. I am in the camp of I should never have to opt into privacy, but after scam I decided to purchase the protection. Dumb, but safer.

After hanging up it hits me. What if Domain Registry Support was just a little company hidden in some corner of the world where they cannot be touched by mainstream officials? What if this company was funded by domain registrars to get people scared into opting into this privacy add on? Could it be that I have just been scammed by a double agent? Maybe watching ABC’s Alias has me thinking nothing is safe {g}.

I thought passing along this story might help others who might get scammed by these evil doers.

Holy bug fixes Batman! Visual FoxPro 9 SP1 was released late yesterday with 200 bug fixes. How many more reasons do you need to get VFP 9 and apply the service pack? So many developers refuse to get a dot zero release on principle. Well time is up. No more excuses. Many thanks to the Fox Team and congratulations on a great release.

Oh, in case you missed it in Ken Levy’s December Letter, VFP 9 SP2 and changes to the EULA for the XSource components have been announced too!

This news topped off another great meeting at the Detroit Area Fox User Group tonight. Lots of good information and interesting discussion. Getting good news is so much better when you are with your fox friends.

Just got an email from Bob and I see on the Southwest Fox Web site the new hotel and conference center have been selected. The tours look nice and the rates are not that much more than the Twin Palms. The lobby looks pretty big and has furniture we can rearrange in typical fox fashion. Also a Spanish track as a new twist for next year to keep things fresh.

Registration begins April 1, no fooling. Mark your calendars.