Setting up Oracle ODBC on Windows 7

Just a quick note note of the steps I took to setup a Oracle 11g ODBC connection on a Windows 7 desktop:

• Download the appropriate Oracle Instant Client
• Get the Basic and the ODBC zip files
• Unzip both into the same folder (e.g. C:\OracleInstantClient\ )
• Execute odbc_install.exe in the Instant Client Folder
• Change your System Environment variables:
• Add the Instant Client Folder to the path
• Create a ORACLE_HOME and add the Instant Client Folder
• Create a “network\admin” folder in the Instant Client folder and create your tnsnames.ora file in there, with the appropriate values.
• You are now able to create a DSN in the ODBC manager using the Oracle driver that uses the TNS names defined in the .ora file

Hope this helps someone

VS2010 and Web Standards Update Pain

I recently moved to a Windows 7 64bit machine and began my install dance. When I tried to install the excellent Web Standards Update extension, it complained that it couldn't find SP1. Re-installing or removing and installing did not help.

In the Q and A pages I found a solution:

• Using the free InstEd It! tool I modified the MSI
•  In the Tables tab -> select the CustomAction entry -> remove the VSDCA_VsdLaunchConditions row
• Save and install the MSI

Now I had found I could not open any css file. It seems the problem was that my Visual Studio was not installed in the OS drive. I copied the {OS drive}\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10\Common7\Packages to the corresponding folder on my installion drive, and happiness! Everything worked.

Quite the hack, but I hope it helps someone. Just don't blame me if things break :)

google code mercurial

I tried to push to a clone on google code with a mercurial repo.
It asks for a username and password. And then fails the authorization when i give it my google account username and password.

You need to use the password that is generated on https://code.google.com/hosting/settings .

Thanks for making things easy google code.

git svn : Path is not canonicalized

At my new job I have to use SVN, but I am a git convert. So: git svn to the rescue!

git svn clone -s https://MACHINENAME:8443/svn/PROJECTNAME/

produced the following error:

error 0: REPORT request failed on '/svn/PROJECTNAME/!svn/vcc/default': 
Path 'https://MACHINENAME:8443/svn/PROJECTNAME'is not canonicalized; 
there is a problem with the client. at C:\Program Files\Git/libexec/git-core/git-svn 
line 5114 

seems it doesn't like the capital letters??!!

git svn clone -s https://machinename:8443/svn/projectname/ 

works as expected.
Hooray!!

Rhinomocks stub mulitple return values

Rhinomocks stubbing is great, but sometimes we need a stubbed instance to return different values.

[Test]
public void gggg()
{
  var myobject = MockRepository.GenerateStub<IMyInterface>();
  myobject.Stub(x => myobject.MyMethod()).Return("woof");
  myobject.Stub(x => x.MyMethod()).Return("croak");
} 

In this case MyMethod will always return “woof”. The “croak” will only be return if we use the .Repeat statements to tell Rhinomocks to limit the usage of the values.

[Test]
public void gggg()
{
  var myobject = MockRepository.GenerateStub<IMyInterface>();
  myobject.Stub(x => myobject.MyMethod()).Return("woof").Repeat.Once();
  myobject.Stub(x => x.MyMethod()).Return("croak");
}

Here the first call to MyMethod will return “woof”, all subsequent calls will return “croak”.

GeckoFx: Accessing the Document Elements

When using the GeckoFx version 1.9.1.0 browser control. it is important to use the correct version of the XULRunner.
When I tried to access the Document Elements with the 1.9.1.0 version of the XULRunner with this code:

geckoBrowser.Document.GetElementById("_mainTableDiv");

this is the error I encountered:

“Unable to cast COM object of type 'System.__ComObject' to interface type 
'Skybound.Gecko.nsIDOMNSElement'. This operation failed because the 
QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with 
IID '{F0AEF489-18C5-4DE6-99D5-58B3758B098C}' failed due to the following 
error: No such interface supported (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80004002 
(E_NOINTERFACE)).”

It was fixed by using the 1.9.1.4 version of the XULRunner.
Hope this helps someone.