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• Rails: How to have dynamic association

  - by Aaron Dufall

  I'll use an example to explain what behaviour I would like to achieve. If you had a project management app and you added a task, but not all the contributors are users of the app. So when you adding contributors to the task you can enter a user name or email address. Here is the part that I'm finding a little tricky. The task model has many contributors which are linked through the user model, but from this point on I want to achieve 2 things. Store the non members email(this would obviously be quite simple) If that email address was to create an account it would then link that user to the task and remove the temporally saved email. This way, when that user creates an account all the related tasks will already be associated with their email. Is this something that i could achieve with a polymorphic association? or is there something else I should be looking at?

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• Dataset Binding stored procedures update/insert/delete

  - by Jin

  Hi all, I am currently having a problem since the DB has been changed. I am using Datasets for a c# application, and there is a user management system. For the security issues, our current DB design is like user log into app. DB returns a session ID On use of any other stored procedures, a session ID must be specified. BUT, the DB didn't request session ID before. since I am using the datasets, I used update/insert/delete stored procedures with "TableAdaptor Configuration Wizard". Bind Commands to Existing Stored Procedures (choose stored procedures to call and specify any reuiqred parameters) Now, it seems like I have to specify session ID for Insert/Update/Delete stored procedures. How do I specify session ID parameter here? It seems like I have to pick one return parameter variable from a select statement. Thanks,

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• Can anyone explain how to configure the title of my block? I can configure "teaser" and "image", but not "title".

  - by Tyrone

  In content management, I want to configure the title of my block. I do not want the title to show up on the top of the actual page (I want it to show up just in the sidebar where the viewer can click on it). I want a different title on the page that it goes to after clicking the sidebar block. How do I do that? There is no configure button for "title", but there is one for "teaser" and "image". I have little experience with computers, so any tips/advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

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• Distributing cpu-bound compression jobs to multiple computers?

  - by barnaby

  The other day I needed to archive a lot of data on our network and I was frustrated I had no immediate way to harness the power of multiple machines to speed-up the process. I understand that creating a distributed job management system is a leap from a command-line archiving tool. I'm now wondering what the simplest solution to this type of distributed performance scenario could be. Would a custom tool always be a requirement or are there ways to use standard utilities and somehow distribute their load transparently at a higher level? Thanks for any suggestions.

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• [ADVICE] .NET Desktop Application - Client Server C#, SQL

  - by Rillanon

  Hi guys, Recently I've being given a chance to develop a PMS (Practice Management System) software for a small physiotherapy clinic. I'm a computer science student and my course is predominately told on Linux. However, my client runs all their computers on vista or Windows 7. My ideas are to develop the client front end in Visual C# and access a central postgresql server. I'm a beginner in Windows Programming so I'm after advice on best practice on implement user rights and access levels in C# (WPF or Windows FORM). I've had a look into Credential class in Visual C# and access control list but please share your thoughts. I'm probably way over my head on this but this is my first commercial project so I'm keen to test the waters. Cheers Ian

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• How to access the service instance from host object in WCF?

  - by user1048677

  I am trying to incarnate some sort of ad hoc WCF service. I already managed to launch it and make it call its own web methods as some other guy's methods. The issue that I am facing is instance management. I have set [ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single)] so it now has a global instance with the same properties for all clients. But besides that I need it to call other services of its kind while listening to incoming requests from clients (similar crazy services). While debugging I noticed that the ServiceHost's constructor calls the constructor of the service class. So, I assumed it has access to the global instance of this class and I need to find a way to call methods of this instance. Please don't ask what I have been smoking, I just have to make it ad hoc.

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• updating the values in detail view from another view....

  - by praseed

  Hi friends, i am building one app almost similar to contact management system...in which i have a detail view .. on pressing one of the table cells, a new view will be shown were the user can enter the new values and on pressing the save button the values will be updated in the database. On going back to the detail view the user should be able to see the updated values in the table cells.. or how can i update the values in detail view from another view...? i came to know that this can be acheived through Appdelegate objects ... but i couldnt understand wat is it or how it is done.... may be bcuz i am new to iPhone apps development... Pls can anyone explain me the process..

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• Spring MVC managing multiple views with single controller

  - by Sudhir

  I am trying to implement order management module. There are different order types (approximately about 15). Each order has a seperate view. But the actions performed on UI are same irrespective of order type. Below is the structure of my DTO abstract class Order abstract class SecurityOrder extends Order abstract class TermDepositOrder extends Order ..... ..... ..... I am trying to implement a single controller capable of managing all views. Something similar to the one below: @Controller public class OrderController<F extends Order> { public F validate(F order) { } public F insert(F order) { } } I am not sure how spring mvc would be able to map request parameters properly to the order instance as it doesn't know which order instance to populate. Is it possible to achieve this with single controller or should I go with a controller for each order type and duplicate same code across all controllers?

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• Persistent UDP sessions on Android

  - by Wedgeski

  I have a client-server app which requires me to maintain a persistent session over UDP. The goal is to maintain a path from the server to the mobile Android device no matter what route it has to the internet (WiFi or mobile network). This is achieved using a proprietary, well-tested session-management protocol over UDP. I need the phone to be able to maintain, say, a five-minute keep-alive with the server at all times. Ideally I would like to do this without maintaining any wake-locks on the device. I don't want the screen to light up every time I send a UDP to the server, for example, and I don't want to have a damaging effect on battery usage. Has anyone addressed this problem?

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• Application Role and access second database

  - by lszk

  I have written a script to create an audit trails to my database in a second one db. So far I had no problems during tests on my dev machine from SQL Server Management Studio. Problems started to occurs when I first tried to test my triggers from my application by modyfing data in it. Using profiler I found out, that my audit trails db is not visible in sys.databases, so here lies the problem. The application using an Application Role, so as I found on MSDN, that's why I can't get access to other db on the server. I'm not a DBA. I have no experience with properly settings the security stuff, so please guide me, how can I set the setting for guest account (according to MSDN) to get access to this db? I need to have a record for this database in sys.databases and I need to be able to insert data in this database in all tables. No select, update or delete I need.

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• SqlDataAdapter.Fill suddenly taking a long time

  - by WraithNath

  I have an application with a central DataTier that can execute a query to a data table using an SQLDataAdapter. None of this code has changed but now all queries are taking at least 10x as long to execute a query returning even one record. The only difference is that I have been using the app in a VM but the issue has started mid way through using the application. eg, the speed issue has not manifested itself from the start of using the VM, rather half way through. Has anyone else had an issue with the SQL Data Adapter taking a long time to fill for no reason? executing the query in Management studio it runs in less than a second. Firewalls are disabled

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• Hoard allocator not "working"?

  - by Cowboy

  I'm trying to Hoard allocator to work, but it seems it doesn't. I have a benchmark application that does a lot of dynamic memory management. The execution time for Hoard and glibc memory manager is the same. It makes me wonder if I'm doing the right thing. What I do is... export LD_PRELOAD="/path/libhoard.so" g++ main.cpp -O3 -o bm -lpthread -lrt Shouldn't I have to link to Hoard allocator? Does it matter what path (in LD_PRELOAD) is, or can I have whatever path? I'm running Ubuntu 8.04, and g++ 4.2.4 Cheers

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• I'm maintaining a java class that's 40K lines long.. problem?

  - by Billworth Vandory

  This may be a subjective question leading to deletion but I would really like some feedback. Recently, I moved to another very large enterprise project where I work as a C++ developer. I was aghast to find most classes in the project are anywhere from 8K to 50K lines long with methods that are 1K to 8K lines long. It's mostly business logic dealing with DB tables and data management, full of conditional statements to handle the use cases. Are classes this large common in large enterprise systems? I realize without looking at the code it's hard to make a determination, but have you ever worked on a system with classes this large?

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• Django forms: prepopulate form with request.user and url parameter

  - by Malyo

  I'm building simple Course Management App. I want Users to sign up for Course. Here's sign up model: class CourseMembers(models.Model): student = models.ForeignKey(Student) course = models.ForeignKey(Course) def __unicode__(self): return unicode(self.student) Student model is extended User model - I'd like to fill the form with request.user. In Course model most important is course_id, which i'm passing into view throught URL parameter (for example http://127.0.0.1:8000/courses/course/1/). What i want to achieve, is to generate 'invisible' (so user can't change the inserted data) form with just input, but containing request.user and course_id parameter.

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• Can I override a group policy setting as a machine admin?

  - by Max

  Group policy prevents several configuration settings on my Windows 7 / Vista machines. Since my domain account is a member of the local Administrators group on these boxes, is there still a way to override them locally? For instance, GP prevents changing the power management option "Turn off the display" (even changing it from cmd fails: POWERCFG -X -monitor-timeout-ac 60 = "An unexpected error condition has occurred. Unable to perform operation. You may not have permission to perform this operation.") Even when logging on with a local account and not the domain account, it's not possible to change the setting anymore ..

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• PHP Put list from Powershell into Array

  - by Mezzan

  Code: $exchangesnapin = "Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.E2010"; $output = shell_exec('powershell '.$exchangesnapin.';"get-mailboxdatabase" 2>&1'); echo( '<pre>' ); echo( $output ); echo( '</pre>' ); Result: Name Server Recovery ReplicationType ---- ------ -------- --------------- Mailbox Database 0651932265 EGCVMADTEST False None Mailbox Database 0651932266 EGCVMADTEST False None I tried with echo( $output[1] ); The result was only a letter 'N'. I believe its taking the Name column but one character at a time. $output[1] is 'N', $output[2] is 'a'. Is there any way I can get the mailbox list into array?

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• Do c++ templates make programs slow ?

  - by user293398

  Hi, I have heard from many people that usage of templates make the code slow. Is it really true. I'm currently building a library. There are places where if templates are not created, it would result in code management problem. As of now I can think two solutions to this problem: o use #defines o Use templates and define all possible types in the header file/library itself but do not allow end user to make template instances. e.g. typedef Graph GraphI32; etc. Is there anyway, to restrict user from creating various template instances on their own. Help on above queries would be highly regarded.

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• Difference between local and instance variables in ruby

  - by fflyer05

  I am working on a script that creates several fairly complex nested hash datastructures and then iterates through them conditionally creating database records. This is a standalone script using active record. After several minutes of running I noticed a significant lag in server responsiveness and discovered that the script, while being set to be nice +19, was enjoying a steady %85 - %90 total server memory. In this case I am using instance variables simply for readability. It helps knowing what is going to be re-used outside of the loop vs. what won't. Is there a reason to not use instance variables when they are not needed? Are there differences in memory allocation and management between local and instance variables? Would it help setting @variable = nil when its no longer needed?

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• how to guarantee atomicity across two databases (the filesystem and your RDBMS)?

  - by Lock up

  i am working on a online file management project.In which we are storing references on the database(sql server) and files data on the on file system;.In which we are facing a problem of coordination between file system and database while we are uploading a file and also in case of deleting a file that first we create a reference in the data base or store files on file system;;the problem is that if create a reference in the database first and then storing a file on file system.bur while storing files on the file system any type of error occur.then reference for that file is created in the database but no file data on the file system;; please give me some solution how to deal with such situation;;i am badly in need of it;; and reason for that?

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• How to manage memory for ios with large csv files?

  - by Pell000

  I'm new to ios development, and I'm running into issues relating to memory management and my approaches to dealing with large datasets. Right now, I am loading the csv files and storing the relevant data as objects in memory at app initialization. Some of the csv files are larger than 1MB, and in total, my app uses about 180MB of memory. This is obviously way too high of a number (unless the info I found is wrong and this is an acceptable number, then please let me know). I feel as though there is a fundamental flaw in my approach: is there a way I can avoid storing the csv files in the project itself? Or, is there a kind of "lazy" loading I can do so that I can simply look up info in the csv file, as opposed to loading all of the data from it at once? Any help would do. I think that I need a new perspective in how to manage this more efficiently.

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• e-library system development

  - by mmcc

  I want to develop an web based library system, and it may feature a "add this book to cart" function, and in its cart page, user can set the book reservation date and click 'Ok' button to finish the reservation process. On the backend side, the admin management page can check that reservation request information. To achieve this function, which way can do so? 1. Asp.net MVC + C# + MSSQL 2. Dotnetnuke (i don't know if this CMS can help) or any idea ?

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• SQL SERVER – World Shapefile Download and Upload to Database – Spatial Database

  - by pinaldave

  During my recent, training I was asked by a student if I know a place where he can download spatial files for all the countries around the world, as well as if there is a way to upload shape files to a database. Here is a quick tutorial for it. VDS Technologies has all the spatial files for every location for free. You can download the spatial file from here. If you cannot find the spatial file you are looking for, please leave a comment here, and I will send you the necessary details. Unzip the file to a folder and it will have the following content. Then, download Shape2SQL tool from SharpGIS. This is one of the best tools available to convert shapefiles to SQL tables. Afterwards, run the .exe file. When the file is run for the first time, it will ask for the database properties. Provide your database details. Select the appropriate shape files and the tool will fill up the essential details automatically. If you do not want to create the index on the column, uncheck the box beside it. The screenshot below is simply explains the procedure. You also have to be careful regarding your data, whether that is GEOMETRY or GEOGRAPHY. In this example,  it is GEOMETRY data. Click “Upload to Database”. It will show you the uploading process. Once the shape file is uploaded, close the application and open SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). Run the following code in SSMS Query Editor. USE Spatial GO SELECT * FROM dbo.world GO This will show the complete map of world after you click on Spatial Results in Spatial Tab. In Spatial Results Set, the Zoom feature is available. From the Select label column, choose the country name in order to show the country name overlaying the country borders. Let me know if this tutorial is helpful enough. I am planning to write a few more posts about this later. Note: Please note that the images displayed here do not reflect the original political boundaries. These data are pretty old and can probably draw incorrect maps as well. I have personally spotted several parts of the map where some countries are located a little bit inaccurately. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Add-On, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Spatial, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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• Announcing release of ASP.NET MVC 3, IIS Express, SQL CE 4, Web Farm Framework, Orchard, WebMatrix

  - by ScottGu

  I’m excited to announce the release today of several products: ASP.NET MVC 3 NuGet IIS Express 7.5 SQL Server Compact Edition 4 Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0 Orchard 1.0 WebMatrix 1.0 The above products are all free. They build upon the .NET 4 and VS 2010 release, and add a ton of additional value to ASP.NET (both Web Forms and MVC) and the Microsoft Web Server stack. ASP.NET MVC 3 Today we are shipping the final release of ASP.NET MVC 3.  You can download and install ASP.NET MVC 3 here.  The ASP.NET MVC 3 source code (released under an OSI-compliant open source license) can also optionally be downloaded here. ASP.NET MVC 3 is a significant update that brings with it a bunch of great features.  Some of the improvements include: Razor ASP.NET MVC 3 ships with a new view-engine option called “Razor” (in addition to continuing to support/enhance the existing .aspx view engine).  Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required when writing a view template, and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow. Unlike most template syntaxes, with Razor you do not need to interrupt your coding to explicitly denote the start and end of server blocks within your HTML. The Razor parser is smart enough to infer this from your code. This enables a compact and expressive syntax which is clean, fast and fun to type.  You can learn more about Razor from some of the blog posts I’ve done about it over the last 6 months Introducing Razor New @model keyword in Razor Layouts with Razor Server-Side Comments with Razor Razor’s @: and <text> syntax Implicit and Explicit code nuggets with Razor Layouts and Sections with Razor Today’s release supports full code intellisense support for Razor (both VB and C#) with Visual Studio 2010 and the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. JavaScript Improvements ASP.NET MVC 3 enables richer JavaScript scenarios and takes advantage of emerging HTML5 capabilities. The AJAX and Validation helpers in ASP.NET MVC 3 now use an Unobtrusive JavaScript based approach.  Unobtrusive JavaScript avoids injecting inline JavaScript into HTML, and enables cleaner separation of behavior using the new HTML 5 “data-“ attribute convention (which conveniently works on older browsers as well – including IE6). This keeps your HTML tight and clean, and makes it easier to optionally swap out or customize JS libraries.  ASP.NET MVC 3 now includes built-in support for posting JSON-based parameters from client-side JavaScript to action methods on the server.  This makes it easier to exchange data across the client and server, and build rich JavaScript front-ends.  We think this capability will be particularly useful going forward with scenarios involving client templates and data binding (including the jQuery plugins the ASP.NET team recently contributed to the jQuery project).  Previous releases of ASP.NET MVC included the core jQuery library.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also now ships the jQuery Validate plugin (which our validation helpers use for client-side validation scenarios).  We are also now shipping and including jQuery UI by default as well (which provides a rich set of client-side JavaScript UI widgets for you to use within projects). Improved Validation ASP.NET MVC 3 includes a bunch of validation enhancements that make it even easier to work with data. Client-side validation is now enabled by default with ASP.NET MVC 3 (using an onbtrusive javascript implementation).  Today’s release also includes built-in support for Remote Validation - which enables you to annotate a model class with a validation attribute that causes ASP.NET MVC to perform a remote validation call to a server method when validating input on the client. The validation features introduced within .NET 4’s System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace are now supported by ASP.NET MVC 3.  This includes support for the new IValidatableObject interface – which enables you to perform model-level validation, and allows you to provide validation error messages specific to the state of the overall model, or between two properties within the model.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also supports the improvements made to the ValidationAttribute class in .NET 4.  ValidationAttribute now supports a new IsValid overload that provides more information about the current validation context, such as what object is being validated.  This enables richer scenarios where you can validate the current value based on another property of the model.  We’ve shipped a built-in [Compare] validation attribute  with ASP.NET MVC 3 that uses this support and makes it easy out of the box to compare and validate two property values. You can use any data access API or technology with ASP.NET MVC.  This past year, though, we’ve worked closely with the .NET data team to ensure that the new EF Code First library works really well for ASP.NET MVC applications.  These two posts of mine cover the latest EF Code First preview and demonstrates how to use it with ASP.NET MVC 3 to enable easy editing of data (with end to end client+server validation support).  The final release of EF Code First will ship in the next few weeks. Today we are also publishing the first preview of a new MvcScaffolding project.  It enables you to easily scaffold ASP.NET MVC 3 Controllers and Views, and works great with EF Code-First (and is pluggable to support other data providers).  You can learn more about it – and install it via NuGet today - from Steve Sanderson’s MvcScaffolding blog post. Output Caching Previous releases of ASP.NET MVC supported output caching content at a URL or action-method level. With ASP.NET MVC V3 we are also enabling support for partial page output caching – which allows you to easily output cache regions or fragments of a response as opposed to the entire thing.  This ends up being super useful in a lot of scenarios, and enables you to dramatically reduce the work your application does on the server.  The new partial page output caching support in ASP.NET MVC 3 enables you to easily re-use cached sub-regions/fragments of a page across multiple URLs on a site.  It supports the ability to cache the content either on the web-server, or optionally cache it within a distributed cache server like Windows Server AppFabric or memcached. I’ll post some tutorials on my blog that show how to take advantage of ASP.NET MVC 3’s new output caching support for partial page scenarios in the future. Better Dependency Injection ASP.NET MVC 3 provides better support for applying Dependency Injection (DI) and integrating with Dependency Injection/IOC containers. With ASP.NET MVC 3 you no longer need to author custom ControllerFactory classes in order to enable DI with Controllers.  You can instead just register a Dependency Injection framework with ASP.NET MVC 3 and it will resolve dependencies not only for Controllers, but also for Views, Action Filters, Model Binders, Value Providers, Validation Providers, and Model Metadata Providers that you use within your application. This makes it much easier to cleanly integrate dependency injection within your projects. Other Goodies ASP.NET MVC 3 includes dozens of other nice improvements that help to both reduce the amount of code you write, and make the code you do write cleaner.  Here are just a few examples: Improved New Project dialog that makes it easy to start new ASP.NET MVC 3 projects from templates. Improved Add->View Scaffolding support that enables the generation of even cleaner view templates. New ViewBag property that uses .NET 4’s dynamic support to make it easy to pass late-bound data from Controllers to Views. Global Filters support that allows specifying cross-cutting filter attributes (like [HandleError]) across all Controllers within an app. New [AllowHtml] attribute that allows for more granular request validation when binding form posted data to models. Sessionless controller support that allows fine grained control over whether SessionState is enabled on a Controller. New ActionResult types like HttpNotFoundResult and RedirectPermanent for common HTTP scenarios. New Html.Raw() helper to indicate that output should not be HTML encoded. New Crypto helpers for salting and hashing passwords. And much, much more… Learn More about ASP.NET MVC 3 We will be posting lots of tutorials and samples on the http://asp.net/mvc site in the weeks ahead.  Below are two good ASP.NET MVC 3 tutorials available on the site today: Build your First ASP.NET MVC 3 Application: VB and C# Building the ASP.NET MVC 3 Music Store We’ll post additional ASP.NET MVC 3 tutorials and videos on the http://asp.net/mvc site in the future. Visit it regularly to find new tutorials as they are published. How to Upgrade Existing Projects ASP.NET MVC 3 is compatible with ASP.NET MVC 2 – which means it should be easy to update existing MVC projects to ASP.NET MVC 3.  The new features in ASP.NET MVC 3 build on top of the foundational work we’ve already done with the MVC 1 and MVC 2 releases – which means that the skills, knowledge, libraries, and books you’ve acquired are all directly applicable with the MVC 3 release.  MVC 3 adds new features and capabilities – it doesn’t obsolete existing ones. You can upgrade existing ASP.NET MVC 2 projects by following the manual upgrade steps in the release notes.  Alternatively, you can use this automated ASP.NET MVC 3 upgrade tool to easily update your  existing projects. Localized Builds Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 release is available in English.  We will be releasing localized versions of ASP.NET MVC 3 (in 9 languages) in a few days.  I’ll blog pointers to the localized downloads once they are available. NuGet Today we are also shipping NuGet – a free, open source, package manager that makes it easy for you to find, install, and use open source libraries in your projects. It works with all .NET project types (including ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, WPF, WinForms, Silverlight, and Class Libraries).  You can download and install it here. NuGet enables developers who maintain open source projects (for example, .NET projects like Moq, NHibernate, Ninject, StructureMap, NUnit, Windsor, Raven, Elmah, etc) to package up their libraries and register them with an online gallery/catalog that is searchable.  The client-side NuGet tools – which include full Visual Studio integration – make it trivial for any .NET developer who wants to use one of these libraries to easily find and install it within the project they are working on. NuGet handles dependency management between libraries (for example: library1 depends on library2). It also makes it easy to update (and optionally remove) libraries from your projects later. It supports updating web.config files (if a package needs configuration settings). It also allows packages to add PowerShell scripts to a project (for example: scaffold commands). Importantly, NuGet is transparent and clean – and does not install anything at the system level. Instead it is focused on making it easy to manage libraries you use with your projects. Our goal with NuGet is to make it as simple as possible to integrate open source libraries within .NET projects.  NuGet Gallery This week we also launched a beta version of the http://nuget.org web-site – which allows anyone to easily search and browse an online gallery of open source packages available via NuGet.  The site also now allows developers to optionally submit new packages that they wish to share with others.  You can learn more about how to create and share a package here. There are hundreds of open-source .NET projects already within the NuGet Gallery today.  We hope to have thousands there in the future. IIS Express 7.5 Today we are also shipping IIS Express 7.5.  IIS Express is a free version of IIS 7.5 that is optimized for developer scenarios.  It works for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC project types. We think IIS Express combines the ease of use of the ASP.NET Web Server (aka Cassini) currently built-into Visual Studio today with the full power of IIS.  Specifically: It’s lightweight and easy to install (less than 5Mb download and a quick install) It does not require an administrator account to run/debug applications from Visual Studio It enables a full web-server feature set – including SSL, URL Rewrite, and other IIS 7.x modules It supports and enables the same extensibility model and web.config file settings that IIS 7.x support It can be installed side-by-side with the full IIS web server as well as the ASP.NET Development Server (they do not conflict at all) It works on Windows XP and higher operating systems – giving you a full IIS 7.x developer feature-set on all Windows OS platforms IIS Express (like the ASP.NET Development Server) can be quickly launched to run a site from a directory on disk.  It does not require any registration/configuration steps. This makes it really easy to launch and run for development scenarios.  You can also optionally redistribute IIS Express with your own applications if you want a lightweight web-server.  The standard IIS Express EULA now includes redistributable rights. Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for IIS Express.  Read my VS 2010 SP1 and IIS Express blog post to learn more about what it enables.  SQL Server Compact Edition 4 Today we are also shipping SQL Server Compact Edition 4 (aka SQL CE 4).  SQL CE is a free, embedded, database engine that enables easy database storage. No Database Installation Required SQL CE does not require you to run a setup or install a database server in order to use it.  You can simply copy the SQL CE binaries into the \bin directory of your ASP.NET application, and then your web application can use it as a database engine.  No setup or extra security permissions are required for it to run. You do not need to have an administrator account on the machine. Just copy your web application onto any server and it will work. This is true even of medium-trust applications running in a web hosting environment. SQL CE runs in-memory within your ASP.NET application and will start-up when you first access a SQL CE database, and will automatically shutdown when your application is unloaded.  SQL CE databases are stored as files that live within the \App_Data folder of your ASP.NET Applications. Works with Existing Data APIs SQL CE 4 works with existing .NET-based data APIs, and supports a SQL Server compatible query syntax.  This means you can use existing data APIs like ADO.NET, as well as use higher-level ORMs like Entity Framework and NHibernate with SQL CE.  This enables you to use the same data programming skills and data APIs you know today. Supports Development, Testing and Production Scenarios SQL CE can be used for development scenarios, testing scenarios, and light production usage scenarios.  With the SQL CE 4 release we’ve done the engineering work to ensure that SQL CE won’t crash or deadlock when used in a multi-threaded server scenario (like ASP.NET).  This is a big change from previous releases of SQL CE – which were designed for client-only scenarios and which explicitly blocked running in web-server environments.  Starting with SQL CE 4 you can use it in a web-server as well. There are no license restrictions with SQL CE.  It is also totally free. Tooling Support with VS 2010 SP1 Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for SQL CE 4 and ASP.NET Projects.  Read my VS 2010 SP1 and SQL CE 4 blog post to learn more about what it enables.  Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0 Today we are also releasing Microsoft Web Deploy V2 and Microsoft Web Farm Framework V2.  These services provide a flexible and powerful way to deploy ASP.NET applications onto either a single server, or across a web farm of machines. You can learn more about these capabilities from my previous blog posts on them: Introducing the Microsoft Web Farm Framework Automating Deployment with Microsoft Web Deploy Visit the http://iis.net website to learn more and install them. Both are free. Orchard 1.0 Today we are also releasing Orchard v1.0.  Orchard is a free, open source, community based project.  It provides Content Management System (CMS) and Blogging System support out of the box, and makes it possible to easily create and manage web-sites without having to write code (site owners can customize a site through the browser-based editing tools built-into Orchard).  Read these tutorials to learn more about how you can setup and manage your own Orchard site. Orchard itself is built as an ASP.NET MVC 3 application using Razor view templates (and by default uses SQL CE 4 for data storage).  Developers wishing to extend an Orchard site with custom functionality can open and edit it as a Visual Studio project – and add new ASP.NET MVC Controllers/Views to it.  WebMatrix 1.0 WebMatrix is a new, free, web development tool from Microsoft that provides a suite of technologies that make it easier to enable website development.  It enables a developer to start a new site by browsing and downloading an app template from an online gallery of web applications (which includes popular apps like Umbraco, DotNetNuke, Orchard, WordPress, Drupal and Joomla).  Alternatively it also enables developers to create and code web sites from scratch. WebMatrix is task focused and helps guide developers as they work on sites.  WebMatrix includes IIS Express, SQL CE 4, and ASP.NET - providing an integrated web-server, database and programming framework combination.  It also includes built-in web publishing support which makes it easy to find and deploy sites to web hosting providers. You can learn more about WebMatrix from my Introducing WebMatrix blog post this summer.  Visit http://microsoft.com/web to download and install it today. Summary I’m really excited about today’s releases – they provide a bunch of additional value that makes web development with ASP.NET, Visual Studio and the Microsoft Web Server a lot better.  A lot of folks worked hard to share this with you today. On behalf of my whole team – we hope you enjoy them! Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Running an intern program

  - by dotneteer

  This year I am running an unpaid internship program for high school students. I work for a small company. We have ideas for a few side projects but never have time to do them. So we experiment by making them intern projects. In return, we give these interns guidance to learn, personal attentions, and opportunities with real-world projects. A few years ago, I blogged about the idea of teaching kids to write application with no more than 6 hours of training. This time, I was able to reduce the instruction time to 4 hours and immediately put them into real work projects. When they encounter problems, I combine directions, pointer to various materials on w3school, Udacity, Codecademy and UTube, as well as encouraging them to  search for solutions with search engines. Now entering the third week, I am more than encouraged and feeling accomplished. Our the most senior intern, Christopher Chen, is a recent high school graduate and is heading to UC Berkeley to study computer science after the summer. He previously only had one year of Java experience through the AP computer science course but had no web development experience. Only 12 days into his internship, he has already gain advanced css skills with deeper understanding than more than half of the “senior” developers that I have ever worked with. I put him on a project to migrate an existing website to the Orchard content management system (CMS) with which I am new as well. We were able to teach each other and quickly gain advanced Orchard skills such as creating custom theme and modules. I felt very much a relationship similar to the those between professors and graduate students. On the other hand, I quite expect that I will lose him the next summer to companies like Google, Facebook or Microsoft. As a side note, Christopher and I will do a two part Orchard presentations together at the next SoCal code camp at UC San Diego July 27-28. The first part, “creating an Orchard website on Azure in 60 minutes”, is an introductory lecture and we will discuss how to create a website using Orchard without writing code. The 2nd part, “customizing Orchard websites without limit”, is an advanced lecture and we will discuss custom theme and module development with WebMatrix and Visual Studio.

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• IIS SSL Certificate Renewal Pain

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’m in the middle of my annual certificate renewal for the West Wind site and I can honestly say that I hate IIS’s certificate system.  When it works it’s fine, but when it doesn’t man can it be a pain. Because I deal with public certificates on my site merely once a year, and you have to perform the certificate dance just the right way, I seem to run into some sort of trouble every year, thinking that Microsoft surely must have addressed the issues I ran into previously – HA! Not so. Don’t ever use the Renew Certificate Feature in IIS! The first rule that I should have never forgotten is that certificate renewals in IIS (7 is what I’m using but I think it’s no different in 7.5 and 8), simply don’t work if you’re submitting to get a public certificate from a certificate authority. I use DNSimple for my DNS domain management and SSL certificates because they provide ridiculously easy domain management and good prices for SSL certs – especially wildcard certificates, which is what I use on west-wind.com. Certificates in IIS can be found pegged to the machine root. If you go into the IIS Manager, go to the machine root the tree and then click on certificates and you then get various certificate options: Both of these options create a new Certificate request (CSR), which is just a text file. But if you’re silly enough like me to click on the Renew button on your old certificate, you’ll find that you end up generating a very long Certificate Request that looks nothing like the original certificate request and the format that’s used for this is not accepted by most certificate authorities. While I’m not sure exactly what the problem is, it simply looks like IIS is respecting none of your original certificate bit size choices and is generating a huge certificate request that is 3 times the size of a ‘normal’ certificate request. The end result is (and I’ve done this at least twice now) is that the certificate processor is likely to fail processing those renewals. Always create a new Certificate While it’s a little more work and you have to remember how to fill out the certificate request properly, this is the safe way to make sure your certificate generates properly. First comes the Distinguished Name Properties dialog: Ah yes you have to love the nomenclature of this stuff. Distinguished name, Common name – WTF is a common name? It doesn’t look common to me! Make sure this form gets filled out correctly. Common NameThis is the domain name of the Web site. In my case I’m creating a wildcard certificate so I’m using the * prefix. If you’re purchasing a certificate for a specific domain use www.west-wind.com or store.west-wind.com for example. Make sure this matches the EXACT domain you’re trying to use secure access on because that’s all the certificate is going to work on unless you get a wildcard certificate. Organization Is the name of your company or organization. Depending on the kind of certificate you purchase this name will show up on your certificate. Most low end SSL certificates (ie. those that cost under $100 for single domains) don’t list the organization, the higher signature certificates that also require extensive validation by the cert authority do. Regardless you should make sure this matches the right company/organization. Organizational Unit This can be anything. Not really sure what this is for, but traditionally I’ve always set this to Web because – well this is a Web thing after all right? I’ve never seen this used anywhere that I can tell other than to internally reference the cert. State and CountryPretty obvious. Should reflect the location of the business/organization/person or site.   Next you have to configure the bit size used for the certificate: The default on this dialog is 1024, but I’ve found that most providers these days request a minimum bit length of 2048, as did my DNSimple provider. Again check with the provider when you submit to make sure. Bit length mismatches can cause problems if you use a size that isn’t supported by the provider. I had that happen last year when I submitted my CSR and it got rejected quite a bit later, when the certs usually are issued within an hour or less. When you’re done here, the certificate is saved to disk as a .txt file and it should look something like this (this is a 2048 bit length CSR):-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIEVGCCAz0CAQAwdjELMAkGA1UEBhMCVVMxDzANBgNVBAgMBkhhd2FpaTENMAsG A1UEBwwEUGFpYTEfMB0GA1UECgwWV2VzdCBXaW5kIFRlY2hub2xvZ2llczEMMAoG B1UECwwDV2ViMRgwFgYDVQQDDA8qLndlc3Qtd2luZC5jb20wggEiMA0GCSqGSIb3 DQEBAQUAA4IBDwAwggEKAoIBAQDIPWOFMkMVRp2Ftj9w/cCVV4OYYhoZYtl+8lTk oqDwKca0xWHLgioX/9v0rZLS6a82MHqKEBxVXu+cuCmSE4AQtB/1YH9lS4tpc/be OZDvnTotP6l4MCEzzAfROcw4CiIg6X0RMSnl8IATAvv2V5LQM9TDdt9oDdMpX2IY +vVC9RZ7PMHBmR9kwI2i/lrKitzhQKaHgpmKcRlM6iqpALUiX28w5HJaDKK1MDHN 607tyFJLHijuJKx7PdTqZYf50KkC3NupfZ2avVycf18Q13jHWj59tvwEOczoVzRL l4LQivAqbhyiqMpWnrZunIOUZta5aGm+jo7O1knGWJjxuraTAgMBAAGgggGYMBoG CisGAQQBgjcNAgMxDBYKNi4yLjkyMDAuMjA0BgkrBgEEAYI3FRQxJzAlAgEFDAZS QVNYUFMMC1JBU1hQU1xSaWNrDAtJbmV0TWdyLmV4ZTByBgorBgEEAYI3DQICMWQw YgIBAR5aAE0AaQBjAHIAbwBzAG8AZgB0ACAAUgBTAEEAIABTAEMAaABhAG4AbgBl AGwAIABDAHIAeQBwAHQAbwBnAHIAYQBwAGgAaQBjACAAUAByAG8AdgBpAGQAZQBy AwEAMIHPBgkqhkiG9w0BCQ4xgcEwgb4wDgYDVR0PAQH/BAQDAgTwMBMGA1UdJQQM MAoGCCsGAQUFBwMBMHgGCSqGSIb3DQEJDwRrMGkwDgYIKoZIhvcNAwICAgCAMA4G CCqGSIb3DQMEAgIAgDALBglghkgBZQMEASowCwYJYIZIAWUDBAEtMAsGCWCGSAFl AwQBAjALBglghkgBZQMEAQUwBwYFKw4DAgcwCgYIKoZIhvcNAwcwHQYDVR0OBBYE FD/yOsTbXE+GVFCFMmldzQvyloz9MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAA4IBAQCK6LlsCuIM 1AU0niB6QZ9v0FTsGFxP1dYvVUnJyY6VEKNiGFiQjZac7UCs0p58yScdXWEFOE8V OsjAYD3xYNc05+ckyD67UHRGEUAVB9RBvbKW23KeR/8kBmEzc8PemD52YOgExxAJ 57xWmAwEHAvbgYzQvhO8AOzH3TGvvHbg5UKM1pYgNmuwZq5DkL/IDoeIJwfk/wrI wghNTuxxIFgbH4YrgLgv4PRvrS/LaTCRBdboaCgzATMczaOb1nd/DVNR+3fCtMhM W0psTAjzRbmXF3nJyAQa7jF/52gkY0RfFX2lG5tJnG+XDsVNvKNvh9Qa5Tlmkm06 ILKCm9ciWCKk -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- You can take that certificate request and submit that to your certificate provider. Since this is base64 encoded you can typically just paste it into a text box on the submission page, or some providers will ask you to upload the CSR as a file. What does a Renewal look like? Note the length of the CSR will vary somewhat with key strength, but compare this to a renewal request that IIS generated from my existing site:-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIPpwYFKoZIhvcNAQcCoIIPmDCCD5QCAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIIIqAYJKoZI hvcNAQcBoIIImQSCCJUwggiRMIIH+gIBADBdMSEwHwYDVQQLDBhEb21haW4gQ29u dHJvbCBWYWxpFGF0ZWQxHjAcBgNVBAsMFUVzc2VudGlhbFNTTCBXaWxkY2FyZDEY MBYGA1UEAwwPKi53ZXN0LXdpbmQuY29tMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCB iQKBgQCK4OuIOR18Wb8tNMGRZiD1c9X57b332Lj7DhbckFqLs0ys8kVDHrTXSj+T Ye9nmAvfPpZmBtE5p9qRNN79rUYugAdl+qEtE4IJe1bRfxXzcKa1SXa8+TEs3zQa zYSmcR2dDuC8om1eAdeCtt0NnkvANgm1VLwGOor/UHMASaEhCQIDAQABoIIG8jAa BgorBgEEAYI3DQIDMQwWCjYuMi45MjAwLjIwNAYJKwYBBAGCNxUUMScwJQIBBQwG UkFTWFBTDAtSQVNYUFNcUmljawwLSW5ldE1nci5leGUwZgYKKwYBBAGCNw0CAjFY MFYCAQIeTgBNAGkAYwByAG8AcwBvAGYAdAAgAFMAdAByAG8AbgBnACAAQwByAHkA cAB0AG8AZwByAGEAcABoAGkAYwAgAFAAcgBvAHYAaQBkAGUAcgMBADCCAQAGCSqG SIb3DQEJDjGB8jCB7zAOBgNVHQ8BAf8EBAMCBaAwDAYDVR0TAQH/BAIwADA0BgNV HSUELTArBggrBgEFBQcDAQYIKwYBBQUHAwIGCisGAQQBgjcKAwMGCWCGSAGG+EIE ATBPBgNVHSAESDBGMDoGCysGAQQBsjEBAgIHMCswKQYIKwYBBQUHAgEWHWh0dHBz Oi8vc2VjdXJlLmNvbW9kby5jb20vQ1BTMAgGBmeBDAECATApBgNVHREEIjAggg8q Lndlc3Qtd2luZC5jb22CDXdlc3Qtd2luZC5jb20wHQYDVR0OBBYEFEVLAyO8gDiv lsfovKrx9mHPyrsiMIIFMAYJKwYBBAGCNw0BMYIFITCCBR0wggQFoAMCAQICEQDu 1E1T5Jvtkm5LOfSHabWlMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAMHIxCzAJBgNVBAYTAkdCMRsw GQYDVQQIExJHcmVhdGVyIE1hbmNoZXN0ZXIxEDAOBgNVBAcTB1NhbGZvcmQxGjAY BgNVBAoTEUNPTU9ETyBDQSBMaW1pdGVkMRgwFgYDVQQDEw9Fc3NlbnRpYWxTU0wg Q0EwHhcNMTQwNTA3MDAwMDAwWhcNMTUwNjA2MjM1OTU5WjBdMSEwHwYDVQQLExhE b21haW4gQ29udHJvbCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQxHjAcBgNVBAsTFUVzc2VudGlhbFNTTCBX aWxkY2FyZDEYMBYGA1UEAxQPKi53ZXN0LXdpbmQuY29tMIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAiyKfL66XB51DlUfm6xXqJBcvMU2qorRHxC+WjEpB amvg8XoqNfCKzDAvLMbY4BLhbYCTagqtslnP3Gj4AKhXqRKU0n6iSbmS1gcWzCJM CHufZ5RDtuTuxhTdJxzP9YqZUfKV5abWQp/TK6V1ryaBJvdqM73q4tRjrQODtkiR PfZjxpybnBHFJS8jYAf8jcOjSDZcgN1d9Evc5MrEJCp/90cAkozyF/NMcFtD6Yj8 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+XZ8bhM7vsAS+pZionR4MyuQ0mYIt/lDcsZVZ91KxTsIm8rNMkkYGFoSIXjQ0+0t CbxMF0i2qnpmNRpA6PU8l7lxxvPkplsk9KB8QIPFrR5p/i/SUAd9vECWh5+/ktlc rfFP2PK7XcEwWizsvMrNqLyvQVNXSUPTMYIBrzCCAasCAQEwgYcwcjELMAkGA1UE BhMCR0IxGzAZBgNVBAgTEkdyZWF0ZXIgTWFuY2hlc3RlcjEQMA4GA1UEBxMHU2Fs Zm9yZDEaMBgGA1UEChMRQ09NT0RPIENBIExpbWl0ZWQxGDAWBgNVBAMTD0Vzc2Vu dGlhbFNTTCBDQQIRAO7UTVPkm+2Sbks59IdptaUwCQYFKw4DAhoFADANBgkqhkiG 9w0BAQEFAASCAQB8PNQ6bYnQpWfkHyxnDuvNKw3wrqF2p7JMZm+SuN2qp3R2LpCR mW2LrGtQIm9Iob/QOYH+8houYNVdvsATGPXX2T8gzn+anof4tOG0vCTK1Bp9bwf9 MkRP+1c8RW/vkYmUW4X5/C+y3CZpMH5dDTaXBIpXFzjX/fxNpH/rvLzGiaYYL3Cn OLO+aOADr9qq5yoqwpiYCSfYNNYKTUNNGfYIidQwYtbHXEYhSukB2oR89xD2sZZ4 bOqFjUPgTa5SsERLDDeg3omMKiIXVYGxlqBEq51Kge6IQt4qQV9P9VgInW7cWmKe dTqNHI9ri3ttewdEnT++TKGKKfTjX9SR8Waj -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- Clearly there’s something very different between this an my original request! And it didn’t work. IIS creates a custom CSR that is encoded in a format that no certificate authority I’ve ever used uses. If you want the gory details of what’s in there look at this ServerFault question (thanks to Mika in the comments). In the end it doesn’t matter  though – no certificate authority knows what to do with this CSR. So create a new CSR and skip the renewal. Always! Use the same Server Keep in mind that on IIS at least you should always create your certificate on a single server and then when you receive the final certificate from your provider import it on that server. IIS tracks the CSR it created and requires it in order to import the final certificate properly. So if for some reason you try to install the certificate on another server, it won’t work. I’ve also run into trouble trying to install the same certificate twice – this time around I didn’t give my certificate the proper friendly name and IIS failed to allow me to assign the certificate to any of my Web sites. So I removed the certificate and tried to import again, only to find it failed the second time around. There are other ways to fix this, but in my case I had to have the certificate re-issued to work – not what you want to do. Regardless of what you do though, when you import make sure you do it right the first time by crossing all your t’s and dotting your i's– it’ll save you a lot of grief! You don’t actually have to use the server that the certificate gets installed on to generate the CSR and first install it, but it is generally a good idea to do so just so you can get the certificate installed into the right place right away. If you have access to the server where you need to install the certificate you might as well use it. But you can use another machine to generated the and install the certificate, then export the certificate and move it to another machine as needed. So you can use your Dev machine to create a certificate then export it and install it on a live server. More on installation and back up/export later. Installing the Certificate Once you’ve submitted a CSR request your provider will process the request and eventually issue you a new final certificate that contains another text file with the final key to import into your certificate store. IIS does this by combining the content in your certificate request with the original CSR. If all goes well your new certificate shows up in the certificate list and you’re ready to assign the certificate to your sites. Make sure you use a friendly name that matches domain name of your site. So use *.mysite.com or www.mysite.com or store.mysite.com to ensure IIS recognizes the certificate. I made the mistake of not naming my friendly name this way and found that IIS was unable to link my sites to my wildcard certificate. It needed to have the *. as part of the certificate otherwise the Hostname input field was blanked out. Changing the Friendly Name If you by accidentally used an invalid friendly name you can change it later in the Windows certificate store. Bring up a Run Box Type MMC File | Add/Remove Snap In Add Certificates | Computer Account | Local Computer Drill into Certificates | Personal | Certificates Find your Certificate | Right Click | Properties Edit the Friendly Name | Click OK Backing up your Certificate The first thing you should do once your certificate is successfully installed is to back it up! In case your server crashes or you otherwise lose your configuration this will ensure you have an easy way to recover and reinstall your certificate either on the same server or a different one. If you’re running a server farm or using a wildcard certificate you also need to get the certificate onto other machines and a PFX file import is the easiest way to do this. To back up your certificate select your certificate and choose Export from the context or sidebar menu: The Export Certificate option allows you to export a password protected binary file that you can import in a single step. You can copy the resulting binary PFX file to back up or copy to other machines to install on. Importing the certificate on another machine is as easy as pointing at the PFX file and specifying the password. IIS handles the rest. Assigning a new certificate to your Site Once you have the new certificate installed, all that’s left to do is assign it to your site. In IIS select your Web site and bring up the Site Bindings from the right sidebar. Add a new binding for https, bind it to port 443, specify your hostname and pick the certificate from the pick list. If you’re using a root site make sure to set up your certificate for www.yoursite.com and also for yoursite.com so that both work properly with SSL. Note that you need to explicitly configure each hostname for a certificate if you plan to use SSL. Luckily if you update your SSL certificate in the following year, IIS prompts you and asks whether you like to update all other sites that are using the existing cert to the newer cert. And you’re done. So what’s the Pain? So, all of this is old hat and it doesn’t look all that bad right? So what’s the pain here? Well if you follow the instructions and do everything right, then the process is about as straight forward as you would expect it to be. You create a cert request, you import it and assign it to your sites. That’s the basic steps and to be perfectly fair it works well – if nothing goes wrong. However, renewing tends to be the problem. The first unintuitive issue is that you simply shouldn’t renew but create a new CSR and generate your new certificate from that. Over the years I’ve fallen prey to the belief that Microsoft eventually will fix this so that the renewal creates the same type of CSR as the old cert, but apparently that will just never happen. Booo! The other problem I ran into is that I accidentally misnamed my imported certificate which in turn set off a chain of events that caused my originally issued certificate to become uninstallable. When I received my completed certificate I installed it and it installed just fine, but the friendly name was wrong. As a result IIS refused to assign the certificate to any of my host headered sites. That’s strike number one. Why the heck should the friendly name have any effect on the ability to attach the certificate??? Next I uninstalled the certificate because I figured that would be the easiest way to make sure I get it right. But I found that I could not reinstall my certificate. I kept getting these stop errors: "ASN1 bad tag value met" that would prevent the installation from completion. After searching around for this error and reading countless long messages on forums, I found that this error supposedly does not actually mean the install failed, but the list wouldn’t refresh. Commodo has this to say: Note: There is a known issue in IIS 7 giving the following error: "Cannot find the certificate request associated with this certificate file. A certificate request must be completed on the computer where it was created." You may also receive a message stating "ASN1 bad tag value met". If this is the same server that you generated the CSR on then, in most cases, the certificate is actually installed. Simply cancel the dialog and press "F5" to refresh the list of server certificates. If the new certificate is now in the list, you can continue with the next step. If it is not in the list, you will need to reissue your certificate using a new CSR (see our CSR creation instructions for IIS 7). After creating a new CSR, login to your Comodo account and click the 'replace' button for your certificate. Not sure if this issue is fixed in IIS 8 but that’s an insane bug to have crop up. As it turns out, in my case the refresh didn’t work and the certificate didn’t show up in the IIS list after the reinstall. In fact when looking at the certificate store I could see my certificate was installed in the right place, but the private key is missing which is most likely why IIS is not picking it up. It looks like IIS could not match the final cert to the original CSR generated. But again some sort of message to that affect might be helpful instead of ASN1 bad tag value met. Recovering the Private Key So it turns out my original problem was that I received the published key, but when I imported the private key was missing. There’s a relatively easy way to recover from this. If your certificate doesn’t show up in IIS check in the certificate store for the local machine (see steps above on how to bring this up). If you look at the certificate in Certificates/Personal/Certificates make sure you see the key as shown in the image below: if the key is missing it means that the certificate is missing the private key most likely. To fix a certificate you can do the following: Double click the certificate Go to the Details Tab Copy down the Serial number You can copy the serial number from the area blurred out above. The serial number will be in a format like ?00 a7 9b a1 a4 9d 91 63 57 d6 9f 26 b8 ee 79 b5 cb and you’ll need to strip out the spaces in order to use it in the next step. Next open up an Administrative command prompt and issue the following command: certutil -repairstore my 00a79ba1a49d916357d69f26b8ee79b5cb You should get a confirmation message that the repair worked. If you now go back to the certificate store you should now see the key icon show up on the certificate. Your certificate is fixed. Now go back into IIS Manager and refresh the list of certificates and if all goes well you should see all the certificates that showed in the cert store now: Remember – back up the key first then map to your site… Summary I deal with a lot of customers who run their own IIS servers, and I can’t tell you how often I hear about botched SSL installations. When I posted some of my issues on Twitter yesterday I got a hell storm of “me too” responses. I’m clearly not the only one, who’s run into this especially with renewals. I feel pretty comfortable with IIS configuration and I do a lot of it for support purposes, but the SSL configuration is one that never seems to go seamlessly. This blog post is meant as reminder to myself to read next time I do a renewal. So I can dot my i's and dash my t’s before I get caught in the mess I’m dealing with today. Hopefully some of you find this useful as well.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in IIS7  Security   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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