Looking for a good place to eat in Chi-Town? ChiBites!

Okay this is not a technical post, but even socially awkward nerds who compensate with weak blog knowledge have to eat.

I found a blog with really good descriptions and recommendations for the North side of Chicago:

http://chibites.wordpress.com/

Check it out!

Diablopup.net

To those few of you who actually visit this blog, you may have noticed the recent lack of new activity.

I am in the process of consolidating these nerdy tidbits in a dedicated site, Diablopup.net. I found at the outset that blogspot was bad for displaying code snippets unless you spend a lot of time formatting your template. I'm simply not that smart. To get around this, I often forwarded you to my live spaces blog. What a pain, I agree.

So, it may take awhile, but look for this blog to shrink and the new site to grow. The live spaces blog will go away, and you can bookmark diablopup.net . For now, I have created a feed to the site, down below (near the Google ads ;)).

Thanks for visiting!

Quick Troubleshooting Tip: "Run As"

This post moved to diablopup.net

Pool Inventory

Posting moved to diablopup.net

ADSI - Create an IIS Site Redirect

Posting moved to diablopup.net

File Attribute in Web.Config

A previous post provided a simple example for decoupling various configuration sections from your web.config by using the configSource attribute to point to external files. This feature is available in asp.net 2+.

Another option is the File attribute. An example is provided in the following blog. I think this attribute has more going for it than the configSource attribute.

Default + Optional Override

The file attribute allows you to keep default settings in your web.config. If .NET finds the specified configuration specified by the file attribute, it overrides your defaults. This provides you with the option to decouple your configuration from web.config:
If asp.net finds a "user.config" in my application directory, it uses those settings.

Available in ASP.NET 1.1

Given the file attribute's availability in asp.net 1.1, I don't see the added value that the configSource attribute provides in asp.net 2.0. Comments?

File Must Reside within the Application's Physical Directory Structure

To further decouple the application from configuration, I tried specifying the file in a virtual location. This would allow me to stage configuration updates separately from application updates. Like the configSource attribute, it was no dice. Rats.

Product Recommendation: Beyond Compare

Your application works in your QA environment, but not in Production. The IIS configurations are identical. You've verified database connectivity and firewall rules. In fact you've ruled out everything but the code. Is it the same in each environment?

Use Beyond Compare to verify. It quickly surfaces file system differences in a nice GUI.

Side By Side Directory Comparison
The directory comparision displays a side-by-side listing of the "source" and "compare to" directories. Use the "<>" option to display only the differences:

Line by Line File Comparision
Differences will be highlighted via color codes. When you want to drill down into a specific file difference, simply double-click to view a line-by-line file comparison:


Options

Use the referee icon to enable/disable compare options. For instance, an extract from Visual Sourcesafe will yield a new date/time stamp, even if you know the file on the compare directory is identical. Unflagging the "Timestamp" folder comparison criteria will remove this comparison "noise" and allow you to spot more meaningful differences.