We're having fun and games with the new internal dev server. We've got for Windows Server 2008 x64 for a laugh and today was a corker, while trying to install SQL Server 2005 x64 onto the box we repeatedly got an error along the lines of "native client cannot be found sqlncli_x64.msi".

Searching around the install DVD/files didn't reveal anything useful, turns out (after a little Googeling) that Microsoft install the wrong version of the SQL Server Native client tools as part of the prerequisites -instead of the 64bit version you'd expect, they go and install the 32bit which then makes the rest of the installer complain...

Classic! Anyway, thanks to Eric Falsken for the heads up on that error...

After a number of months of hearing how great Microsoft's latest web development environment is -Microsoft Expression Web- I thought I would install it in place of Dreamweaver on my new laptop. I was -until today- pretty impressed with some of it's features, how well it handles CSS within the IDE and had no reason to complain.

That was until today. As I write this, I'm sitting in our apartment in Croatia with the sun beating down on me, generally enjoying life. As it's incredibly hot outside around noon, I thought it would be a good idea to crack on with some work on the new The Site Doctor design -which I hope to have online shortly after I return. So I load up Microsoft Expression Web and the various pages of the new site and crack on.

I've already sorted the CSS for the site so there was no need to open any of the files or make alterations to them however I like to have them open so I can check class names and ids as I work. When I switched over at one point, I noticed that my nice, neat and tidy CSS file of around 190 lines was suddenly closer to 300. I couldn't work it out until I noticed that Microsoft Expression Web had separated out all my group declarations into separate declarations such i.e.:

a , a:link, a:visited, a:active{...}

a , a:link, a:visited, a:active{
text-underline: none;
}

Became:

a:active {...}

a:active {
text-underline: none;
}

a:visited {...}

a:visited {
text-underline: none;
}

a:link {...}

a:link {
text-underline: none;
}

a {...}

a {
text-underline: none;
}

Well done Microsoft, I thought you would have learnt your lesson after the fiasco that was Visual Studio 2003's HTML editing, what on earth were you thinking? I'm sure this is a simple setting I need to change (and I can understand why they've done it) but not having Internet access here there's no easy way of finding out (I've searched the help files) which means hours of careful CSS architecture have been completely trashed.

So, as soon as I realised, I spent about 20 minutes meticulously working through the bunch of CSS files open reversing the mess Microsoft had made of them and promptly closed them, safe in the knowledge Microsoft Expression Web can't mess with them again. Or so I thought.

A short while ago I needed to open one of the CSS files again to alter a few declarations and to my horror I found that the declarations had been ungrouped. I can't believe it, not content with simply altering the CSS files that are open, Microsoft Expression Web actually alters the CSS files on the FSO without you knowing.

If you're ever thinking about using Microsoft Expression Web for CSS development then don't expect your files to be neat and tidy, in my case I would say the files were increased in size by almost 5x which ok may be 1Kb --> 5Kb but if you're getting tens of thousands of hits a day, that's a serious bandwidth increase.

Not a happy bunny.

This is a really useful little VBS script that I’ve been meaning to post for a while now (along with a couple of other little applications I’ve written for log file analysis). I don’t think I wrote this script but at the same time can’t recall where it came from.

It basically traverses the FSO finding files with the designated extension and assuming the match the standard IIS date format, checks whether they’re older than x days, if they are deletes them. Running it is simple, place somewhere obvious on the server and just double click it. Alternatively if you want to read the output, run it from CMD. For safety’s sake, the first time you run it I would leave it just printing out the files that will be deleted.

Personally I don’t schedule this script as although automation is great, I’ll probably have it delete the logs before I’ve had a chance to download them so what I tend to do is download the logs and then after that (or the next time I’m on RDC ) I run it, I find that way I ensure I get all the log files i.e. if I go on holiday.

I’ve got two other applications that I’ll post shortly, one outputs the location of the log files for each domain name within IIS and the other combines the log files into one for analysis –it also takes the exported file/folder locations and names the combined log files with the domain’s name –saves a ton of time!

Download the VBS script as a ZIP file

Option  Explicit

Dim intDaysOld, strObjTopFolderPath, strLogFIleSuffix, ObjFS, ObjTopFolder 
Dim ObjDomainFolder, ObjW3SvcFolder, ObjSubFolder, ObjLogFile, ObjFile

intDaysOld        = 5        'Number of days to retain on the server
strObjTopFolderPath    = ""        'The location of your log files
strLogFIleSuffix    = ".log"    'The suffix of your log files

Set ObjFS = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set ObjTopFolder = ObjFS.GetFolder(strObjTopFolderPath)

For Each ObjDomainFolder in ObjTopFolder.SubFolders
WScript.Echo("Folder: " & ObjDomainFolder.name)
    For Each ObjW3SvcFolder in ObjDomainFolder.SubFolders
        WScript.Echo("  Folder: " & ObjW3SvcFolder.name)
        Set ObjSubFolder = ObjFS.GetFolder(ObjW3SvcFolder)
            For each ObjLogFile in ObjSubFolder.files
                Set ObjFile = ObjFS.GetFile(ObjLogFile)
                If datediff("d",ObjFile.DateLastModified,Date()) > intDaysOld and lcase(right(ObjLogFile,4))=strLogFIleSuffix then
                    '*****************************************************
                    'DON'T UNCOMMENT THIS UNTIL YOU KNOW IT WORKS PROPERLY!!!
                    WScript.Echo("    Will delete " & ObjSubFolder.name & "\" & ObjFile.name)
                    'WScript.Echo("    Deleted " & ObjSubFolder.name & "\" & ObjFile.name)
                    'ObjFile.Delete
                    '*****************************************************
                End If
                Set ObjFile = nothing
            Next
        Set ObjSubFolder = nothing
    Next
Next

Set ObjTopFolder = nothing
Set ObjFS = nothing

This is still unconfirmed and somewhat word-of-mouth etc atm but if you check out Ian Moulster's blog you'll see his post about Microsoft giving away free copies of the release version of Vista and Office 2007 check out his blog post to find out more.

Hopefully we'll hear more before DDD Day