The last post was pretty short... So, here are some more details regarding "Azure Tables for LightSwitch", which you may download from Microsoft's Visual Studio Gallery here.

Product Description

We have developped this “Azure Tables for LightSwitch” as part as our interest in both Visual studio LightSwitch, and the Windows azure platform.

“Azure Tables for LightSwitch” enables LightSwitch developers to use azure tales data sources, which does not come as an integrated option in the original LightSwitch suite.

Currently we do not intend to sell this product for profit, but use it as part of a software development projects that enables building applications that use both SQL Azure and Azure tables data sources in order to lower application costs, and are using mainly LightSwitch as the back-office system for these projects.

Here are a few more details regarding this product:

The Product:

ATLS – Azure Table for LightSwitch - Managed Azure Tables using LightSwitch 

What is it good for?

Now anyone can easily access Azure tables’ right from within LightSwitch!

Azure Tables storage is meant to store large chunks of data. It is much cheaper than using Azure SQL, especially if you have tons of flat data.

LightSwitch enables development of quick and powerful back office systems

Who is it good for?

Any company who is making use of Azure tables for high traffic or for huge piles of data, who wishes to have easy management access to this data.

Ideal for media and advertisement companies who needs large data storage with very high load of transactions, which needs a quick management application.

Features:

1. Connect to existing entity storage

2. Create new Azure Tables with a simple designer

3. Define a partition strategy

4. Define custom keys

5. Auto-generate WCF RIA service to interact with full CRUD support

6. Support searching within huge data piles

7. Supports paging

8. Define tables’ relationships - coming soon!

9. All is defined right within the familiar environment of Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011

Hi All,

 We have just completed an initial alpha release of a small product we've been working on. What it does is enabling LightSwitch users to make use of the cheaper storage of Azure - tables.

This is a VS2010 add in, which lets you connect to an Azure storage, define tables or use your existing, auto-generate RIA services code in order to be able to easily expose the requested tables.

How to start?

1. Create a LightSwitch project
2. Under "Tools" menu choose "Azure Tables for LightSwitch"
3. Follow the wizard...

Please give it a try and let me know your further requsts/wishes.

Because Azure Tables for LightSwitch.zip

Amit

Of course it happens at the worst timing. I have installed LightSwitch RTM last week, preparing for an event at Microsoft. Today, finalizing my preperations, my machine crashed, fixed it self by setting me back a few days.

When I tried to fire up a LightSwitch project - I couldn't. So I tried to re-install LightSwitch RTM - which I couldn't, getting a message that I need to remove LightSwitch Beta 2 (which I already removed about a week ago). I opened up the control panel and I could see that LightSwitch Beta 2 lives on my machine. I was trying to remove it and got an alarming message: "A problem has been encountered while loading the setup components. Canceling setup".

Fortunately for me, I still had the Beta 2 installation. So - I have reinstalled Beta 2, Uninstalled it and reinstalled RTM. It now works!

After installing Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2 I got the following error for every project I started: 

Error 67 An error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server instance '.\SQLEXPRESS'.
Timeout expired.  The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding. C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\LightSwitch\v1.0\Microsoft.LightSwitch.targets

The way I have solved it (after a lot of hassle) was to:

1. Uninstall Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2

2. Uninstall SQL Express

3. Re-install Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2

Let me know if it worked for you as well.

While trying to set up our continuous-integration environment - CruiseControl.net (ccnet) with our new Silverlight 4 project, I have encountered some difficulties. Since it did take me some hours to solve, I thought it might be helpful posting the solution I have found appropriate for my needs.

The errors I got from the ccnet report were:

…C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\Silverlight\v4.0\Microsoft.Silverlight.Common.targets" …The Silverlight 4 SDK is not installed

and

…The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\Silverlight\v4.0\Microsoft.Silverlight.CSharp.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.

The solution for me was very straight forward after I found out that Silverlight does not (yet?) support x64 platform. I have changed the build to occur with MSBuild x32 rather than the x64 version I would normally use. That had solved all my problems. Well, to be honest, only the ones had to do with this specific issue…

We have just recently asked by a customer to come up with a simple method of quickly update more than 500 machines with multiple ODBC connections. That might be a hell-of-a headache for the IT guys…

The way we have decided to achieve that, was by running a vbscript (I admit that I forgot it even still exists). So I have found the basic idea in the Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog (thank you!) and have made some changes and additions.

So here it is – in full (can be downloaded from here):

sub UpdateOdbc(Name, Server, Database, User, Password, Trusted)

'Updates an existing System ODBC SQL connection.
'Please note that this script must run with administrative privileges.
'Parameters:
'Name (string) - The ODBC DSN Name
'Server (string) - The full database server name. Might be in Server\Instance format
'Database (string) - The database name
'User (string) - the user name used to login
'Password (string) - the password used to login
'Trusted (boolean) - states that the connection is to be trusted connection. When set to True, both username and password are disregarded.
'
'Usage:
'UpdateOdbc "Because Connection", "Because\sql2008", "BecauseDB", "sa", "jku!oi", False
'or - trusted:
'UpdateOdbc "Because Connection", "Because\sql2008", "BecauseDB ", "", "", True
    if OdbcNameExists(Name) = true then 
        DeleteOdbc Name 
        CreateOdbc Name, Server, Database, User, Password, Trusted 
    end if
end sub
 

sub CreateOdbc(Name, Server, Database, User, Password, Trusted)
'Creates a System ODBC SQL connection.
'Please note that this script must run with administrative privileges.
'Parameters:
'Name (string) - The ODBC DSN Name
'Server (string) - The full database server name. Might be in Server\Instance format
'Database (string) - The database name
'User (string) - the user name used to login
'Password (string) - the password used to login
'Trusted (boolean) - states that the connection is to be trusted connection. When set to True, both username and password are disregarded.
'

'Usage:
'CreateOdbc "Because Connection", "Because\sql2008", "BecauseDB", "sa", "jku!oi", False
'or - trusted:
'CreateOdbc "Because Connection", "Because\sql2008", "BecauseDB", "", "", True 
    Const HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE = &H80000002 

    computer = "." 
    Set registryObject=GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & _ 
    computer & "\root\default:StdRegProv") 

    keyPath = "SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBC.INI\ODBC Data Sources" 
    valueName = Name

    'You may want to replace "SQL Server" with
    '"SQL Server Native Client 10.0" for SQL native client 10
    '"SQL Native Client" for SQL Native client
    value = "SQL Server" 
    registryObject.SetStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,keyPath,valueName,value 

    keyPath = "SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBC.INI\" & Name 
    registryObject.CreateKey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,keyPath 
    keyPath = "SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBC.INI\" & Name 
    valueName = "Database" 
    value = Database 
    registryObject.SetStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,keyPath,valueName,value 

    'Driver - Defaults to SQL Driver (SQLSRV32.dll) 
    'Instead of SQLSRV32.dll you may use: 
    'SQL Native Client - SQLNCLI.dll 
    'SQL Server Native Client 10 - SQLNCLI10.dll 
    valueName = "Driver" 
    value = "C:\WINDOWS\System32\SQLSRV32.dll" 
    registryObject.SetStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,keyPath,valueName,value 
    valueName = "Server" 
    value = Server 
    registryObject.SetStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,keyPath,valueName,value
 
    if Trusted = True then 
        valueName = "Trusted_Connection" 
        value = "Yes" 
        registryObject.SetStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,keyPath,valueName,value 
    else 
        valueName = "Password" 
        value = Password 
        registryObject.SetStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,keyPath,valueName,value 

        valueName = "PWD" 
        value = Password 
        registryObject.SetStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,keyPath,valueName,value 

        valueName = "username" 
        value = User 
        registryObject.SetStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,keyPath,valueName,value 

        valueName = "LastUser" 
        value = User 
        registryObject.SetStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,keyPath,valueName,value 
    end if
end sub
 

sub DeleteOdbc(Name)
'Use to delete an ODBC Connection
'Please note that this script must run with administrative privileges.
'
'Parameters:
'Name (string) - The ODBC DSN Name
'
'Usage:
'DeleteOdbc "Because Connection" 
    Const HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE = &H80000002 
    computer = "." 
    Set registryObject=GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & _ 
    computer & "\root\default:StdRegProv") 
    keyPath = "SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBC.INI\" & Name 
    registryObject.DeleteKey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, keyPath 

    keyPath = "SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBC.INI\ODBC Data Sources" 
    valueName = Name 
    registryObject.DeleteValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,keyPath,valueName
end sub

function OdbcNameExists(Name) 
    Const HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE = &H80000002 
    computer = "." 
    Set registryObject=GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & _ 
    computer & "\root\default:StdRegProv") 
    keyPath = "SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBC.INI\" & Name 
    registryObject.GetStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, keyPath, "Server", key 

    if IsNull(key) then 
        OdbcNameExists = false 
    else 
        OdbcNameExists = true 
    end if
end function

This is really off topic.

I'm having an issue opening XAML files in Visual Studio 2010. The IDE simply crashes. I have opened a bug with Microsoft regarding that matter and will update once I have some sort of a result.

Anyway, I thought it might be something I've installed in the past few days, so I went to System Restore – which of course, happened to be disabled… So, I thought to myself, I'll simply enable it, so that it won't happen again. That wasn't simple as I thought though. When trying to enable system restore on drive C it gave me an error "There was an unexpected error: The filename, directory name or volume label syntax is incorrect. (0x8007007B). System Restore will now close."
After some investigations, I have discovered that I happen to have two instances of C drive on the System Restore Properties form. One appeared in the beginning and the other at the end and was called "C (missing)" – which, by the way, is not a good sign.
All I had to do is to turn off system restore for that "missing" hard drive – which made it disappear, and enable system restore on the correct C drive.