I've been struggling through a Team Foundation Server 2008 install with Sql Server 2008 over the weekend. It seems to be having an especially hard time with the SQL Server Reporting Services. After analyzing a few things, I determined that the configuration tool was having an issue due to some prior installations of software. The report urls were pointing to a SQL Express directory.

I went about setting up the virtual directories manually. This required setting up an application pool, and I assigned my service user to run the pool. After I did that, I had to grant the user write access to the RSTempFiles folder. Then I received an error when browsing the site, "the path is not a legal form."

I couldn't find a site anywhere with a solution, though there was a dead thread on the old msdn forums with the same problem with SRSS. Since the tubes held no hope for me, I had to resort to old fashioned troubleshotting.

If you receive this error, you need to add your application pool user to the SQLServerReportServerUser (followed by $servername$instancename) group. It's that simple, but the error doesn't indicate what is necessary to fix it.

In a recent post, Deepak describes how to generate enums using Linq to Sql and SqlMetal.

1. Generate dbml using SqlMetal.
2. Find reference columns in the dbml that will be used as enums in code. Change their type to the enum name.
3. Generate code using SqlMetal.

I find this pretty interesting, but there would need to be some kind of conventions or configuration to denote which tables will be used as enumerations in the code. I think the way to tackle this is to create a custom msbuild task that will replace the enums for you based on either an item group or an xml property. This whole thing could be wrapped up in msbuild and applied in a separate proj file or in the AfterBuild or BeforeBuild target of one of the projects.

 

I am speaking at the Raleigh Code Camp during the lunch session. I was told it would be made into a webcast for INETA. If that's the case, I'll post a link up to it when I receive it. The topic is Design Principles, and the slide deck is available.

Microsoft has released Enterprise Library 4.1. It is a service release and includes the following:

• Unity interception mechanism and integration of the Policy Injection Application Block with the Unity Application Block
• Added support for generics in the Unity Application Block
•  Added support for arrays in the Unity Application Block
• Performance improvements
• Usability improvements to the configuration tool
• Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 support
•  Bug fixes