Microsoft Access
Database Engine 2010 Redistributable

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=C06B8369-60DD-4B64-A44B-84B371EDE16D&displaylang=en

There is a bug in the documentation at the download page.

The documentation says:
1.If you are the user of an application, consult your application
documentation for details on how to use the appropriate driver.

2.If
you are an application developer using OLEDB, set the Provider argument
of the ConnectionString property to “Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0”
    If
you are connecting to Microsoft Office Excel data, add “Excel 14.0” to
the Extended Properties of the OLEDB connection string.

The "Excel 14.0" is the issue.

It should be "Excel 12.0".

Her are a few connection strings to provide full context.

// Old School Jet, been around for a while
"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=’C:\MyOldSchoolFile.xls’;Extended Properties=’Excel 8.0;HDR=NO;IMEX=1;’;"

//Newer version with xslx
"Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=’C:\MyXlsXFile.xlsx’;Extended Properties=’Excel 12.0 Xml;HDR=NO;IMEX=1;’;"

//Newer version, any xls file
"Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=’C:\AlmostAnyExcelVersionFileRunningUnder64BitOS.xls’;Extended Properties=’Excel 12.0;HDR=NO;IMEX=1;’;"

Don’t take the above as absolute truth.  But it should draw attention to the issue (if you’re experiencing it), and help with some more google (errr. bing) searches.

Here are some other phrases which might lead you here.

The OLE DB provider "Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0" has not been registered
    ( Trying to read an excel file on a 64 bit O/S?  The purple string above should work for you under a 64 bit O/S. )

"Could not find installable ISAM"     
    ( This might show up because of the "14.0" vs "12.0" bug mentioned above )

See also:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2075054/upload-an-excel-file-in-classic-asp-on-windows-2003-x64-using-office-2010-drivers/

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/adodotnetdataproviders/thread/686d8ebb-0da3-4f0c-bf16-9c650f8dcb32

http://www.connectionstrings.com/excel-2007

If I come across one more hard coded security roles brownfield application, I think I’m gonna throw my chair out the window.

Today, I came across an application that does type-checking to determine security.

The code goes something like this:

                        AbstractUser user = SomeGetUserMethod("myname", "mypassword");
                       /* the above method returns 1 of a few concrete classes which implement AbstractUser */

                        // type-checking time!!
                        if (user.GetType() == typeof(BAL.Domain.AdminUser))
                        {
                            MyWebPage.btnDeleteAllEmployees.Visible = true;
                            MyWebPage.btnUpdateMyOwnProfile.Visible = true;
                            MyWebPage.btnLogOut.Visible = true;
                        }

                        if (user.GetType() ==
typeof(BAL.Domain.NormalUser))
                        {
                            MyWebPage.btnDeleteAllEmployees.Visible = false;
                            MyWebPage.btnUpdateMyOwnProfile.Visible =
true;
                            MyWebPage.btnLogOut.Visible = true;
                        }

or maybe you have seen (bool representing 1 of a few hard coded roles)

                        bool isAdmin = SomeMethodToFigureOutHardCodedRoles();
                        bool isNormalUser =
SomeMethodToFigureOutHardCodedRoles();
                        if (isAdmin)
                        {
                            MyWebPage.btnDeleteAllEmployees.Visible =
true;
                            MyWebPage.btnUpdateMyOwnProfile.Visible =
true;
                            MyWebPage.btnLogOut.Visible = true;
                        }
                        if (isNormalUser)

                        {

                            MyWebPage.btnDeleteAllEmployees.Visible =false ; // NormalUser cannot do this! So hide the button.

                            MyWebPage.btnUpdateMyOwnProfile.Visible =
true;

                            MyWebPage.btnLogOut.Visible = true;

                        }

You know the drill. 

And the pre-project-starts-to-be-constructed discussion goes something like this:
"Today, we have 3 roles, lets base all our security off those 3 (hard coded) roles.  Those roles will ~~never~~ change.

And my thoughts on a finite set of hard coded Role(s).
That’s fine for your kid’s soccer club fan page.
That is NOT fine for a professional DotNet developer creating a business application.

I’ve written an example on how NOT do it (so you can see the pattern clearly).

The problem will always end up being that the 3 (N) number of roles will never be sufficient.
A DAY WILL ARRIVE WHEN THE BUSINESS OWNERS WANT A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT ROLE.
They’ll say that want to "tweak" an existing role, but what they really mean is that they want a new role that is very close to an existing role.
But "a tad bit different" is still different.
But you (or your "architect" if you want to blame someone else) did not account for this at the beginning of the project.

You can check out:
http://www.lhotka.net/weblog/CommentView,guid,9efcafc7-68a2-4f8f-bc64-66174453adfd.aspx
for a discussion.
I can’t blame just the developer(s).  Microsoft and its "super easy p-easy" ".IsInRole()" method helped propagate this ugliness.
And then this kind of code:
[PrincipalPermission(SecurityAction.Demand,Role="Teller")]

And I completely agree with the article above and its assertion "At runtime, when the user is actually using the application, the roles are entirely meaningless".
Listen people (aka all you developers) ..  software cares about permissions (or "rights").  Stop coding to roles, start coding to permissions (or rights).

The article above tackles the issue using the existing (available) objects in DotNet.

Here is my custom IPrincipal solution, if the above workaround rubs you the wrong way.
While I have "Role" methods, I never use them ***, except for the AllRoles collection, which I use to show humans what role they are in.
However, I never show just the Roles, I show the Permissions/Rights, because that is more important.

    public interface IRolesAndRightsPrincipal : System.Security.Principal.IPrincipal
    {

        bool IsInRole(System.Guid role);

        bool IsInAnyRole(System.Guid[] roles);

        bool IsInAllRoles(System.Guid[] roles);

        bool HasRight(System.Guid right);

        bool HasAnyRight(System.Guid[] rights);

        bool HasAllRights(System.Guid[] rights);
       
        ISecurityRoleCollection AllRoles
        {
            get;
        }

        ISecurityRightCollection AllRights
        {
            get;
        }
    }

(*** The one place I might use them (though I never have) is backwards compatibility when refactoring an existing application.  If the current application is "all roled up" then that would be a stepping stone to getting to permissions/rights based security.)

You might be saying "What is the HasAnyRight method all about?"

Well, take for instance that you have a menu link called "Manage Employees".
This link will take you to a separate page that allows you to ADDNEW, UPDATE, and/or DELETE an employee.
(These are 3 distinct permission(s)/rights(s)).

So how do you decide if you should show this menu link called "Manage Employees", since its not based on a single permission/right.

And there ya go:  Use the HasAnyRight() method
menuItemManageEmployees.Visible = customPrinc.HasAnyRight ( /* throw the Guids here which represent ADDNEW, UPDATE, DELETE */ );
You show the link if the use has one (any) of the 3 permissions/rights.
Then when you get to that new page, you show buttons/links/etc based on the individual permissions/rights.

Side note, my concrete IRolesAndRightsPrincipal ( adaptly named "RolesAndRightsPrincipal" takes all your roles,rights in its constructor, and then becomes a look-up holder from that point on.  Obviously, if you do on the fly permissions/rights changes, you’ll have to refresh it.
Currently, I just go with a "You gotta re-login to get your fresh permissions/rights", since the project (almost) never takes away any permissions/rights and seldom changes them.  But you’ll have to conquer that design decision on your own.

If you’re developing a new project, and starting out with N number of hard coded roles, please stop.  Please stop.  I’m begging you, please stop.

If you’re in a brownfield application, then ask your manager for some time to re-factor the security.
If your manager is fair, then he/she will find some time for you that does not involve late nights or weekends.
If your manager thinks re-factoring (without scope change) is a waste of time since "it works, so its OK", then find a new job.

This oldie-but-goodie article has the basic meat of a good solution.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/security/cgsecurity.aspx
I would take his DDL, update it to your standards, and "framework up" his "Managers"(.cs code).

It is OK to make a Role, but ONLY in the sense to logically group a set of permissions/rights.
You should be checking permission(s)/right(s) when you actually are interested in the question
                 "Can this IIdentity perform this certain thing?"

Please stop coding hard-coded-roles into your application(s). 
The developers who have to maintain your code after you’ve left will thank you.
..

I have also posted an "Anti Example" C# code example here.  (<<Right-Click , "Save As" usually works best).

//End Rant

The culprit??

No more disk space.

The error is seen below.  "Out of space" isn’t mentioned, thus why I am posting this.
But it makes sense, the xsl transformation didn’t have enough disk space to handle the transform output.

There
was an exception trying to carry out your request.

Exception Message

Unable to execute transform: C:\Program Files
(x86)\CruiseControl.NET\webdashboard\xsl\header.xsl
(or)
Unable to execute transform: C:\Program Files\CruiseControl.NET\webdashboard\xsl\header.xsl

Exception Full Details

5 compiles an hour (when you’re actually developing code (like you love to do) and not in some meeting).
Each compile saves 55 seconds**.
5 hours of development on average a day.  (Hopefully more, but bear with me, I’m trying to use a "5" here.)
5 days a week.

That is ~115 minutes/week of savings.  ~2 hours a week of savings.

Throw into the equation a developer hourly cost of  some kind of middle ground amount of $50 (and another "5" of course!).

** 55 seconds compile time savings is an estimate of course. 
But I actually conducted a real-world test on a solution I am working on right now.
I’d suggest taking a code base you currently have and perform a simple test.
When you build with Msbuild, you only need the code and not the Visual Studio IDE.

Test machines were an older 1.86 Dual Core E6300 vs a 2.4 Quad Core Q6600.  Keep in mind this is an older Quad Core CPU.
My personal recommendation (based in price point at the time of writing this in 4th quarter 2010) is the i7-950 quad-core.

Why didn’t I test with a i7-950?  That’s the point, I don’t have one!!

Fourth Quarter 2010 : Machine Recommendation (Leveraging Frugality vs Performance)
    • Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
    • Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-950 quad-core (or i7-930 quad-core but the newegg difference is only $10 (at the time of writing)
    • 6GB DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM
    • 1TB RAID 0 (2 x 500GB SATA HDDs)
    • 1GB ATI Radeon HD.  A version that supports dual monitors.

Supporting URLS:

Minimum Suggestion: Dual 20" (or 20.5") Monitors.
Suggestion: Dual 22" (23" or 24") monitors.

]]> http://granadacoder.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/rule-of-5-better-machines-for-developers/feed/ 1 granadacoder http://granadacoder.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/svn-subversion-case-sensitivity-issue-with-linux-redhat-svn-server-and-windows-client/ http://granadacoder.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/svn-subversion-case-sensitivity-issue-with-linux-redhat-svn-server-and-windows-client/#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:19:32 +0000 granadacoder http://granadacoder.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/svn-subversion-case-sensitivity-issue-with-linux-redhat-svn-server-and-windows-client Continue reading →]]> I had a weird subversion (svn) issue today.

Here are some clues (for future googlers).

"svn: Can’t open file" ".svn\tmp\text-base" "svn-base" "The system cannot find the file specified".
svn: Can’t open file .svn\tmp\text-base svn-base The system cannot find the file specified

After backtracking, here is what happened.

I had a file (a compiled dll) in source control.
I found out that I had a non-signed version of the dll (DotNet assembly).
I found the "signed version" of the dll.  I wanted to replace the unsigned version with the signed version.

So I replaced the existing file (in my local directory) with the signed version.

There was a slight issue with the file name.

The unsigned version was
MyAssembly.dll

The signed version was ~~~slightly off (case wise):
MyAssembLY.dll

(The file names are obviously for demonstration only).

So when I overwrote MyAssembly.dll with MyAssembLY.dll, it was fine (local windows directory).
The files were "Committed to Subversion".

(FYI, You can ignore the "signed" vs "unsigned" issue I cite above if you’re having this issue…..
the issue was not
related to signed/unsigned, but rather cAsE SenSiTiviTy of the replacement file).

Ok…so I thought everything was cool.  WRONG.

The next time my continuous integration ran, I got the error message seen above.  ("svn: Can’t open file).

I mimicked the command line call ( to take the CI environment out of the equation).

"C:\Program Files\CollabNet\Subversion Client\svn.exe" checkout https://www.something.com/SomeFolder SomeLocalFolder –username myUserName –non-interactive –no-auth-cache

and got the same error message.

The fix?

I deleted all the files in the folder via the repository browser.  (Aka, cleared them OUT of svn).
I uploaded the signed assembly.  (I did this via "Add" and "Commit" with the local tortoise shell).

Please note this is NOT ideal, because of revision history.  I was lucky in that for this branch, history retention was not a priority.

Now the case of the files on the server (svn) matched the case of my (signed) assemblies(dll’s).

Here is the thread that gave me the clue:
http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/STDCXX-14

Server:  CollabNet for RedHat SVN Server.  (Aka, a case sensitive environment)
Client:  CollabNet svn client for Windows.

Basically, this will run a tsql query and dump the data into a jet database.  ("access database" is another way to say it, but I prefer to call the program "Microsoft Access" and then call the database file (.mdb) a jet database to make the distinction clear).

The syntax sugar is below.
However, one key thing to know is that you need to have a .mdb file created ~~before running the code.
Aka, you’ll need to manually make an .mdb and add tables/columns which matches your tsql-select query(ies).

The attached zip (zip file coming soon!) file give you the tsql code and a sample jet database (as a complete example).

Here are the key lines.

–Note, the … before "PersonTable" is there on purpose.
DELETE
FROM OPENDATASOURCE(‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′,
    ‘Data Source=C:\WUWUTemp\JetDatabaseExportExample\person.mdb;’)
    …PersonTable

INSERT INTO OPENROWSET (‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′, ‘C:\WUWUTemp\JetDatabaseExportExample\person.mdb’;'Admin’;”,
‘Select LastName , FirstName From PersonTable’)
SELECT LastName , FirstName
From dbo.SomeRealTable;

Not rocket science, but very handy sometimes.

The below is a "fixed width" export, using bcp.

The syntax sugar for "fixed-width" is the cast to a char(SomeNumber) where SomeNumber is your width of course.
The other gotcha is the -t argument (with nothing specified) which overrides the default column delimiter of a tab.  Aka, below I’m specifying nothing for the -t argument so the default ‘tab’ does not get inserted.  If you want to see how it works, specify the -t argument like this:
-t:***:
Then it will be obvious what the -t argument does.  Remember, there is a default value, so if you don’t want the default, you must override it.

The other syntax sugar is that there is no space after the -S argument.  As seen below (-SMyServerName\MyInstanceName).

bcp.exe  "SELECT cast(LastName as char(50)) , cast(FirstName as char(50)) , cast(MiddleName as char(50)) , cast(Suffix as char(50)) FROM MyAdventureWorksDB.Person.Person ORDER BY NEWID()" queryout PeopleRock.txt -c -t -T -SMyServerName\MyInstanceName

MyAdventureWorksDB is the name of the database.
Person (the first one) is the schema. 
Person (the second one) is the table.

I am using the AdventureWorks2008 database I got from codeplex.

The Order by NEWID() is completely useless and can be removed.  However, if I’m testing the export (most likely importing the data through another system) I like to leave that in so I don’t get the same data or same order every time when I am testing the output.

The other command line argument of interest is queryout.  I’ll let you see what that one does in the microsoft url below.

Here is the full bcp command line list:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms162802.aspx

Again, this is a sqlcmd.exe example of using $(Variable)’s to deploy databases….which emphasizes repeatability but with configurability as well.

Instructions:

Unzip the files……….read the README.txt file (the top portion contains setup information).

If you have ".\SqlExpress" setup as your development environment, you should be able to just click:
RebuildDatabaseMaster_AllThree.bat
and it should just work.

Look at the gif screenshot (in the zip), and compare to your database.

Then you can look at the README.txt file for explanation about what is happening.

There are also output log files you can look at (mentioned in the README.txt file) which will provide clues if anything does not work.

After you get it down, you’re essentially (always) one copy/paste/edit (the variable file) and a second copy/paste/edit (the .bat file) away from deploying a new database.

 ISQLW OSQL << These are the early versions of this tool, FYI.