“The profile for the user is a temporary profile” Error Even After Granting Private Key Read Rights

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Recently, while helping a client deploy a wsHttpBinding Windows Communication Foundation web service configured with message security, we encountered the following error: “The profile for the user is a temporary profile.” As is sometimes the case with WCF certificate security issues, the initial error message’s description did not come close to describing the actual problem. Continue reading →

SQL Refactoring – Comparing Result Sets with EXCEPT

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I often refactor SQL, cleaning up convoluted statements using language features such as views, common table expressions and nested joins. It’s one thing to rework a gnarly query into something legible; it’s another thing to verify that the rewritten query returns the same data as the original.

The starting point for verification is comparing the result sets returned by the old and new queries. I’ve recently found Microsoft T-SQL’s EXCEPT operator quite handy for this purpose. Continue reading →

C# Boolean Expressions With and Without Short-Circuiting

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For years I’ve used the && and || operators in C# Boolean expressions (e.g. if (age > 60 && gender == male) { /* do something */ }). Today, I was surprised to learn that & and | can also be used to compare bool values (this is in addition to their traditional use as bitwise AND and OR operators).

What’s the difference between the two pairs of operators? && and || use short-circuit evaluation while & and | do not. Continue reading →

INotifyPropertyChanged – propertyName – Past, Present and Hopes for the Future

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Raising an INotifyPropertyChanged event requires a string containing the affected property’s name. Developers want a simple, clean and performance-efficient way to populate this string. New versions of .Net have brought developers closer and closer to achieving this goal.

Let’s review how INotifyPropertyChanged implementation options have improved over the years. Then, let’s consider an idea on how these options might be made even better. Continue reading →

async/await Doesn’t Make Synchronous Code Asynchronous

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With the recent release of .Net 4.5/C# 5, I’ve spent time experimenting with the new async/await functionality. To my surprise, these new keywords didn’t have the effect I anticipated. Based on my skimming of pre-release information, I was under the impression that the appropriate use of these keywords would cause a normally-synchronous method to execute asynchronously.

Wrong! Continue reading →

SSRS: Referencing Data Contained in Other Textboxes

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Did you know that the content of other textboxes can be referenced in Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services expressions?

In the example below, the expression for Destination (the lower textbox) is set to =ReportItems!Source.Value. When report rendering occurs, Destination is populated with Source‘s content.

Continue reading →

Placeholders for SSRS Expressions

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How could I have missed it?! Only recently did I discover the placeholder concept in  Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).

In the report design interface, a text box containing an expression more complex than a single field reference (e.g. [FirstName]) or single field aggregate function call (e.g. [Count(Orders)]) is displayed as <<Expr>>. Continue reading →

All Extensions Now Compatible with Mangeto 1.7!

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We are pleased to announce that all of our extensions have been successfully tested with Magento 1.7!

New version of our Customizable PDF Invoice and Customizable PDF Packing Slip modules have been released containing Magento 1.7 compatibility updates.