James Software Development Corner

Microsoft Silverlight – Accessing Session Objects

You must use a web service or wcf service to access the silverlight applications host website application and session objects.

The host website needs a web service with the following code.

<WebMethod(EnableSession:=True)_
Public Sub SetText(ByVal value As String)
   Session("Text")

…

Microsoft Zune – Could not install the software and/or bring up the software and/or play any files

Now, I can’t exactly remember what the issue was (I should have posted as soon as I found the fix), but if you suspect the issue could be DRM related, try this fix from Microsoft. It fixed license issues to …

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 – IDE crashes while debugging and undocking windows

I had an issue one day that whenever I tried to move some of the windows around in the IDE, as soon as I docked the window somewhere, the IDE crashed.

Why me?

Anyway, I found a fix. Give it …

Microsoft Outlook – Click a link restriction

If you get this error when clicking a link in Outlook…

“This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator”

…try this fix from Microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310049…

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) – Dealing with alternating colors on rows with column sorting in a list report in SSRS Reports

Let’s say you have an address database table and you define a column for row number such as this:

SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY LName) AS 'RowNumber',*
FROM   NameAndAddressTable
ORDER BY LName, FName

If you want to alternate between LightGrey and …

Microsoft Office 2010 Icon Problem in Windows 7

All of a sudden, my office 2010 icons defaulted to… well that ugly nothing icon. After doing a day of research, I finally found my solution here:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itproui/thread/d5efec0c-e967-4127-b217-15da34d7fb00

Thanks, mag00n!

First make sure you are able to view hidden and …

SQL Server – How to use a IF…ELSE statement in SQL

IF (SELECT product from product_table WHERE product_type = @productType) = 'HAM'
BEGIN 

SELECT product 
  FROM product_table
  LEFT OUTER JOIN meat_table b on b.product = product_table.product
 WHERE vendor = @vendor END 
ELSE

SELECT product
  FROM product_table
  LEFT OUTER JOIN veggie_table b

…

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) – How to display all the values of a Parameter in a SSRS Report

In your expression method of the textbox, instead of:

=Parameters!someParameter.Value

Do this instead:

=Join(Parameters! someParameter .Value, ", ")

This will join all the values, separated by a comma.…

SQL Server Management Studio – How to remove “Server name” items from history

In the search box, type Command Prompt
Navigate to the root directory – Type cd\ then hit enter
Type DEL /S SqlStudio.bin and hit enter. (This should find every instance of the file and delete it from the system).

Note: …

SQL Server – Dealing with padding zeroes to fields in a SQL Select to correct sorting order

Let’s say you have a varchar field on a SQL table that is a length of 10 and it contains only integers.
If the value of one of the fields is 5, it is stored as ‘5’, not ‘0000000005’. This …