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I am currently developing on a Win 7 (build 7000) x64 box using the newly released MVC addition for ASP.NET.  While the promise of MVC is great, the reality that this developer has been experiencing for the last 2 weeks is not at all what I expected.  For instance, trying to get my routes to behave.

Code:

Results:
  

Compare the data in the “Route Data” table to the “All Route” table (“Defaults” column). 

Now, I run it without the route debugger and this is what I see when I step through this particular URL:

Now, I change the route to http://localhost:1620/Catalog/nav I see this when I inspect the variables:

The position element should be null.  It is not. 

So let’s take this one step further.  Let’s navigate to http://localhost:1620/Catalog/LifeStyle and inspect the variables again:

Now mind you, this is a running instance of VS2008 and I have the Locals window open to the right of my code window.  The inspector object on the left has different values than the Locals window!

This is but 1 of many, many examples of what is acting in a very strange way on my machine.  It has brought my productivity down to nearly zero.

Anyone else having “weird” problems running VS2008 (MVC) on Win 7 x64?

28 Mar 2009 - Today is a new day and I just hit another weirdness in VS2008.

I am playing with the various parts of a menu system, working at meeting client needs (and learning of course).  I am “handling” pagination in a more manual method for the moment.  The Red circled bits are what I see in the code while stepping through it.  The Blue circled code just plain does not run.  While stepping it passed over them and did not execute them.  :(

My wife and I were supposed to go to her Doctor’s appointment today.  After nearly 15 minutes of driving we had made it about a mile into a 30+ mile drive.  Time to turn around and try it another day.  Nasty, nasty day today.  White out conditions, 8-12 inches of snow already with more on the way.  Even here in Colorado where rural schools are rarely closed due to snow, the whole county is shut down. 

Hot chocolate, a warm fire and a couch are beckoning.  But – I have a home office so it is back to work for me.  I’m working on an MVC project currently – what are you doing today?

I am working on an application using MVC and discovered quite quickly that there is no documented way to control my main menu’s looks while it is in the master page.  After searching for an hour or more I knew there had to be a way to overcome this without resorting to adding a code-behind file.

I found a couple of java-script solutions but wanted something more robust.  I queried out to several tech lists, including my favorite on http://aspadvice.com/lists and got some quick hits back.  I think my favorite was “extension methods are your friend. :)”.  Thanks Paul – I’ve never used Extension Methods.

So, on to Extension Methods – which are wickedly cool!  MSDN says this about Extension Methods:

Extension methods enable you to "add" methods to existing types without creating a new derived type, recompiling, or otherwise modifying the original type. Extension methods are a special kind of static method, but they are called as if they were instance methods on the extended type. For client code written in C# and Visual Basic, there is no apparent difference between calling an extension method and the methods that are actually defined in a type.

So, after a couple of false starts and a few blog entries that were semi-complete I finally have my first Extension Method working!  It is not very clean yet so feel free to suggest ways to make this code block better:

using System;
using System.Web;

namespace System.Web
{
    public static class HtmlExtensions
    {
        public static string GetSelected(this HttpRequest Request, string id, string target)
        {
            if (target.ToUpper().IndexOf(Request.Url.ToString().ToUpper()) > 0)
                id += "active";

            return id;
        }
    }
}

To use this I am twiddling the ID attribute on my <LI> elements.  The CSS uses a PNG image with offsets (a sprite I believe it is called) and is looking for either the CSS tag of navA or navAactive.  So, in my code for my menu bar I now have this:

div id="main_nav">
    <ul>              
        <li id="<%= Request.GetSelected("navA", "") %>"><%= Html.ActionLink(" ", "Index", "Home")%></li>
        <li id="<%= Request.GetSelected("navB", "Product") %>"><%= Html.ActionLink(" ", "Index", "Product")%></li>
    </ul>
</div>

Now, depending on what URL is being passed through the Master Page the Extension Method will pull out the URL from the Request object (which is the object we are extending), check to see if the target is in the string. and if it is, append the active token to the id that was passed in.   Obviously this is a site specific Method Extension so I added it to a folder called libraries under my MVC app directory.  I also changed the namespace to System.Web so I don’t need to prefix it when I use it, nor do I have to add a reference for it in any page.

Comments?

I am biting the bullet now.  I have a desktop that is running an AMD Opteron (Dual Core) and have never run a 64 bit OS.  I have Win XP Pro x64 on my MSDN subscription so decided to repave this desktop and install it.  Several false starts later I finally have it up and running.  Getting the drivers to work was no where near the nightmare so many have said it was.  Nvidia had the x64 drivers for my geForce 6200 card and the other drivers I needed were on the motherboard's CD.  MY motherboard is an ASRock 939Dual-SATA2.  Then onto installing the software.  Because of certain add-ons I run in Outlook I opted for Outlook 2003.  VS2005 and VS2008 went on smoothly once I figured out how to properly mount ISOs in the 64 bit environment.

I'll try to post out here as this experience progresses...

Note #1:  I installed the .NET 1.1 Framework and got this message before installing it:

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Microsoft Issue Description: This software has known incompatibility with IIS services on this platform. To maintain IIS functionality, we recommend that users complete the following steps after the software install is complete: 1- From the Start menu select Run then press the Enter key 2- In the "Open" edit field enter the following command: "cscript %SystemDrive%\inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set w3svc/AppPools/Enable32bitAppOnWin64 1" 3- Press the Enter key

Note #2 - Seems none of the Microsoft Live pieces will run on XP Pro x64.  According to the system requirements page:

Operating system: Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (32-bit edition only), Windows Vista (32-bit or 64-bit editions), Windows 7 Beta (32-bit or 64-bit editions), or Windows Server 2008. Note: Windows Live Movie Maker is not supported on Windows XP

I always seem to struggle with a NOT IN clause when there are more than one column to compare.  This, of course, comes up when I am trying to get records from one set that are NOT IN another set and the comparison has to be done across multiple columns.  For instance, if I want to compare table 1 (users) against table 2 (importedUsers) and I want to see if the mandatory fields are there and *NOT* work with those that fail I usually ended up doing a cursor.  But - there is a much easier way to do it and it does need a cursor!  Thanks to David Penton for pointing me in this direction!

DECLARE @impUsers TABLE(empID VARCHAR(50), hireDate SMALLDATETIME, userNew BIT, userChange BIT, userTerm BIT)

INSERT INTO @impEmpTbl
( [empID]
, [hireDate]
, [userNew]
, [userChange]
, [userTerm]
)
SELECT i.empID, i.hireDate, 0, 1, 0
  FROM [ImportUsers] i
INNER JOIN Users u ON i.[empID] = u.[empID]
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1
                     FROM [Users] u2
                    WHERE u2.[empID]         = i.[empID]
                      AND u2.[lastName]      = i.[lastName]
                      AND u2.[firstName]     = i.[firstName]
                      AND t2.[countryInfo]   = i.[countryInfo]
                      AND t2.[emailAddress]  = i.[emailAddress]
                      AND t2.[region]        = i.[region])

Sweet, simple and elegant.  The above query will produce a new record in the temp table for each record that has one or more changes across the 6 fields I am comparing in the NOT EXISTS clause.  What is happening inside the parenthesis is the elegant part.  The SQL Query Engine is comparing one row from the Import table to all rows in the Users (2) table.  If it finds a match then it returns 1 - which means it does exist.  This negates the overall WHERE clause and does not insert it into the temp table.  When doing this in a cursor it was taking 30-45 seconds.  As a T-SQL query it takes less than 3 seconds.  That's an order of magnitude faster!

Microsoft just released it's CTP-1 of a new caching product code named Velocity.  It is a distributed caching technology that should add extra velocity to your ASP.NET applications.

Summary: “Velocity” is a distributed in-memory application cache platform for developing scalable, available, and high-performance applications. “Velocity” fuses memory across multiple computers to give a single unified cache view to applications. Applications can store any serializable CLR object without worrying about where the object gets stored. Scalability can be achieved by simply adding more computers on demand. “Velocity” also allows for copies of data to be stored across the cluster, thus protecting data against failures. “Velocity” can be configured to run as a service accessed over the network or can be run embedded with the distributed application. “Velocity” includes an ASP.NET session provider object that enables ASP.NET session objects to be stored in the distributed cache without having to write to databases. This increases the performance and scalability of ASP.NET applications (17 printed pages)

Some more resources:

• Team Blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/velocity
• Forum - http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=2142&SiteID=1
• Download - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B24C3708-EEFF-4055-A867-19B5851E7CD2&displaylang=en