If you’re experiencing problems with your iOS 4 device and your Exchange server, be advised that there’s a bug in iOS4.  Here’s the email I received from my hosted Exchange provider:

There is currently an issue with Apple’s IOS4 that causes issue with the Activesync function in Exchange. Apple devices that were either upgraded to the 4.0 version or that were delivered with that version already installed are concerned by this issue.

A patch was released by Apple (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3398) that in some cases, will resolve the issue. This patch extends the time that the phone waits for a reply from the exchange server and this should help significantly. Since this issue affects the Activesync system, all types of mobiles can be affected by the issue but the patch is only for iPod touch, iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS.

Sherweb has made modifications to the Activesync system to help palliate for the load caused by the software flaw. If you are still experiencing the issue, please run a small test. On the mobile device, open a browser and type in: https://webmail.ihostexchange.net/cas.txt. Please contact our support team at support@sherweb.com or by phone at 1-888-567-6610 and give us the results of this test.

Thank you for your patience

The Sherweb Team

Nice way to take down the planet’s Exchange server Apple 

Eric Juteau has published a great Expression Encoder 4 FAQ.  A must read is you’re interested by this tool.

Read it here

I started to play around with Expression Encoder 4 Screen Capture doing some recordings when the software showed me this dialog:

Strange, this is the version I installed from my Ultimate Super Extra Complete Top of the line Expression Studio 4 that I downloaded from my Ultimate Super Extra Complete Top of the line MSDN subscription.

I went to the Expression Encoder 4 page and surely, the Pro edition is bundled in Expression Studio 4 Ultimate.  Hummm, is this what I have?  Well, the about box reveals something interesting.  What I have is Expression Encoder 4 Pro (without codecs).

Doh!  What’s that?  This version is not even listed in the Expression Encoder 4 page!  Is this why I can’t record for more than 10 minutes?  Wait!  This is a limitation of the standard version.  You known, the Not Pro version.  What’s wrong with my (without codecs) version and who the hell are you mister (without codecs)?

First of all, the version included in the MSDN subscriptions is the Pro version without codecs.  Because of distribution and royalties reasons, Microsoft can’t bundle these codecs with the software we get in our MSDN subscriptions.  If you need them, you can buy the full retail without the (without codecs) for a mere $50US ($85CDN - yeah, go figure!) from the Microsoft online store.

OK, great.  The identity crisis of my Encoder 4 Pro is now resolved but what about that 10 minutes limit?  Isn’t that a limitation of Encoder 4 (not the Pro or the Pro without codecs)?  Another identity crisis?  Well, it’s a known bug and from what I learned, a fix is on its way.

Identity crisis solved (well almost).

Just heard about this one from my good friend Mario Cardinal.

The Microsoft ALM Summit will take place on November 16-18, 2010 in Redmond.

The conference Website is up but there’s not much info so far.

Microsoft has announced the date and location for it’s next PDC:  October 28 and 29, 2010 in Redmond.  Yep!  Redmond, not L.A.!

Looks like we’ll be able to watch all the keynotes and sessions live from the comfort of our cubicles.

More info here

Microsoft announced at the Worldwide Partners Conference a new member in the Azure family: the Windows Azure Platform Appliance.

You can watch Bob Muglia’s keynote announcing the Azure Appliance:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/wpc/

Microsoft has updated its Azure Website with Appliance information:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/appliance/

You can watch Steve Marx on Channel 9 talking about the Azure Appliance:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/dunnry/Introducing-the-Windows-Azure-Platform-Appliance/

So what is the Azure Platform Appliance?  From what I read today, this is Microsoft’s private cloud offering for governments, large organizations and service providers.

Cool!  This mean that I will be able to download it and install it on a couple of servers!  Not exactly.  The Appliance is a complete solution that comes with both hardware and software and it’s likely that you’ll have to buy at least 1000 servers (think containers) so it’s clearly not targeted at the usual enterprises data centers.

Congrats to Vincent Grondin who was awarded MVP C# on July 1st.  Vincent has been involved in the Montreal .NET Community for about a year now.  He is also an excellent speaker.

Vincent will surely be happy to receive his MVP gift, a true gem this year 

I’m an Acronis True Image user and yesterday, I received an email for a new Acronis product.  It’s called Acronis Drive Monitor and its purpose is to monitor hard drive health.  The good news is that it’s free so I gave it a shot and installed it on my desktop and my server (yep, it support desktop and server Windows OS).

My server has been acting strangely recently and I suspect the main hard drive to be the culprit.  I did run the usual CHKDSK and that helped but my Spiderman senses were still telling me that something was still wrong.  Well, Drive Monitor told me exactly what was wrong by reporting the hard drive S.M.A.R.T. attributes.  Basically, my drive is getting old.  Time to pay a visit to the folks at my local MicroBytes store.

So how long do hard drives live?  I guess that the answer is the classic “It depends” but it think that 3 years is fair enough for a drive spinning 24/7.  For now on, I’ll start a hard drive labelling system sticking an expiration date on them.  Gee, if it’s good enough for milk, it must also be good for hard drives!  

http://www.visualstudiotalkshow.com

Dominic Sevigny: Silverlight dans la grande entreprise

Nous discutons avec Dominic Sevigny de l'adoption de Silverlight dans la grande entreprise. Silverlight est un plugin pour navigateur web multiplate-forme (Windows et Apple, Linux via le projet MoonLight), qui permet de développer des applications web riches dans un moteur de rendu vectoriel. Silverlight a comme concurrents principaux Adobe Flash et Flex, et dans une moindre mesure des solutions telles que JavaFX ou Quicktime d’Apple. Tout dépend si l’on se place du côté outil de conception de véritables applications ou de simple diffuseur de média (vidéos, musiques…).

Dominic Sévigny est président de RunAtServer Consulting, une entreprise spécialisée dans la consultation ASP.NET et offrant une expertise de développement Web exemplaire par la qualité de ses développeurs séniors. Dominic est reconnu comme étant un conférencier très dynamique. En effet, il donne à l’occasion des conférences sur les technologies Web telles que ASP.NET et Ajax. Il a donné plusieurs conférences à la Communauté .Net de Montréal ainsi qu’au DevTeach où il a été nommé « Best Speaker » en 2007. Il est le formateur exclusif de toutes les formations ASP.NET et AJAX pour le plus grand centre de formation de Montréal, Technologia. Pour la quatrième année consécutive, il a obtenu de Microsoft le titre de MVP ASP.NET.

If you’re interested in learning Windows Phone 7 development, check DevTeach’s Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp with superstar trainer Colin Melia.

More info here

Oh and save a whopping $100 by using this super special secret code while registering: G0005GUVSM

I was wondering how WPF would perform when running in Remote Desktop and found this great article from Jossef Goldberg.

Basically, WPF apps can run smoothly inside Remote Desktop.  You need to turn off animations and “screen candy” and tweak some Remote Desktop settings.

Read the article here.  Highly recommended!

Students can get their hands on Office Pro Academic 2010 for a mere $80 in the US or $90 CDN in Canada.  The offer is also available in more countries.

For more info check the Microsoft student Website

I just found out about this community written free ebook about Windows Azure.  It’s a series of articles edited by Eric Nelson and written by 15 authors. 

You can download it here.

Microsoft released an update to its Azure training kit.

Here is what is new in the kit:

• Introduction to Windows Azure - VS2010 version
• Introduction To SQL Azure - VS2010 version
• Introduction to the Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Service Bus - VS2010 version
• Introduction to Dallas - VS2010 version
• Introduction to the Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Access Control Service - VS2010 version
• Web Services and Identity in the Cloud
• Exploring Windows Azure Storage VS2010 version + new Exercise: “Working with Drives”
• Windows Azure Deployment VS2010 version + new Exercise: “Securing Windows Azure with SSL”
• Minor fixes to presentations – mainly timelines, pricing, new features etc.

Download it here

More Azure news from TechEd US 2010.  This time, it’s from the SQL Azure team:

• 50GB databases available on June 28th
• Support for Spatial Data
• Data Sync Service for SQL Azure
• Microsoft SQL Server Web Manager
• Access 2010 Support for SQL Azure

Read at about it here

The Expression 4 suite of products shipped today.  Good news, it’s a free upgrade for Expression 3 owners.

New with version 4 is the Expression Studio 4 Web Professional suite.  Basically, it’s Expression Studio 4 Ultimate without Blend and SketchFlow.

The Azure team did a few announcements today at TechED US 2010:

• June 2010 Azure Tools SDK with support for VS 2010 RTM and the .NET Framework 4
• Production launch of the Azure CDN
• OS Auto-upgrade Feature

Read all about it here

http://www.visualstudiotalkshow.com

JP Duplessis: Visualisation et analyse de code dans Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Mario profite de sa présence au campus de Microsoft à Redmond au États-Unis pour discuter de visualisation et d'analyse de code avec Jean-Pierre Duplessis. Pour l'occasion Mario est accompagné d'un coanimateur d'un jour soit Étienne Tremblay qui lui aussi se trouvait au campus de Microsoft au même moment.

Jean-Pierre Duplessis est architecte chez Microsoft dans la division Visual Studio. Il est un vétéran de longue date de Microsoft. Il a débuté avec l'équipe de développement de Microsoft Host Integration Server. Ensuite, il a été responsable de concevoir la connexion aux réseaux sans-fil sous Windows NT. Ces dernières années, son travail avec l'équipe Visual Studio lui a permis de retourner à sa première passion soit l'analyse de code pour permettre de visualiser et comprendre l'architecture d'une application existante.

Microsoft published a short SQL Azure deployment document:

This document provides guidelines on how to deploy an existing on-premise SQL Server database into SQL Azure. It also discusses best practices related to data migration.

Download it here

Warning: I’m a simple dev, not an all powerful DBA with godly powers.

This morning, one of my sites was down and DNN reported a problem with the database.  A quick series of tests revealed that the culprit was a corrupted log file.

Easy fix I said, I have daily backups so it’s just a mater of restoring a good copy of the database and log files.  Well, I found out that’s not exactly true.  You see, for this database, I have daily file backups and these are not database backups created by SQL Server.

So I restored a set of files from a couple of days ago, stopped the SQL service, copied the files over the bad ones, restarted the service only to find out that SQL doesn’t like when you do that.  It suspects something fishy and marks the database as suspect.  A database marked as suspect can’t be accessed at all.  So now what?

I searched throughout the tubes of the InterWeb and found that you can restore from a corrupted log file by creating a new database with the same name as the defective one, then copy the restored database file (the one with data) over the newly created one.  Sweet!  But you still end up with SQL marking the database as suspect but at least, the newly created log is OK.  Well not true, it’s not corrupted but the lack of data makes it not OK for SQL so you need to rebuild the log.  How can you do that when SQL blocks any action the database? 

First, you need to change the database status from suspect to emergency.  Then you need to set the database for single access only.  After that, you need to repair the log with DBCC and do the DBA dance.  If you dance long enough, SQL should repair the log file.  Now you need to set the access back to multi user.  Here’s the T-SQL script:

use master
GO
EXEC sp_resetstatus 'MyDatabase'
ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase SET EMERGENCY
Alter database MyDatabase set Single_User
DBCC checkdb('MyDatabase')
ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE
DBCC CheckDB ('MyDatabase', REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS)
ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase SET MULTI_USER

So I guess that I would have been a lot easier to restore a SQL backup.  I can’t really say but the InterWeb seems to say so.  Anyway, lessons learned:

• Vive la différence: File backups are different then SQL backups.
• Don’t touch me: SQL doesn’t like when you restore a file over a corrupted one.
• The more the merrier: You should do both SQL and file backups.
• WTF?: The InterWeb provides you with dozens of way to deal with the problem but many are SQL 2000 or SQL 2005 only, many are confusing and many are written in strange dialects only DBAs understand.