Tag: microsoft

Moving from CDO to the Outlook Object Model

February 2, 2012 In Dovetail Agent, there has been support for a long time to integrate Microsoft Outlook into the email functionality. In the past this has been done by using Collaboration Data Objects (CDO), which is a 32-bit client library that provides access to Outlook-compatible objects through a COM-based API. As customers (and Dovetail Software employees) upgraded to Office 2010 (x64), the Outlook integration solution that tried to load the 32-bit CDO ActiveX controls or DLLs did not work. The resolution for this issue was to migrate Dovetail Agent from using CDO to use the Outlook Object Model (OOM). Opening the Session with Outlook The first step was to get access to the Outlook Object Model (OOM). In Dovetail Agent 4.5, the method for opening a session was to create a MAPI session from CDO, and then log on using the default…

ASP.NET Security Fix Now on Windows Update

October 5, 2010 I had recently blogged about a security vulnerability in ASP.NET. Microsoft has released a security fix for this issue that is available through Windows Update. Details and frequently asked questions are available. Please make sure to install these updates as soon as possible on your servers.

Information regarding the recent ASP.NET Security Vulnerability

September 21, 2010 Microsoft recently released a Security Advisory in regards to a vulnerability in ASP.NET. We take security seriously here at Dovetail Software and wanted to let you know how this affects your Dovetail Software products. Scott Guthrie, Corporate VP at Microsoft in charge of ASP.NET, has posted information regarding this issue, and some Frequently Asked Questions about it. He has recommended that customers immediately apply a workaround (described below) to prevent attackers from using this vulnerability against your ASP.NET applications. Dovetail Applications Affected: Dovetail Mobile Agent Dovetail Seeker This can also affect any custom ASP.NET applications that you’ve created, including those that use the Dovetail SDK. We are working on updated releases to these products and will notify our customers via our normal product release update channels when these releases are available. We are also emailing all of our customers who…

AspNetHostingPermission exception got you down? Unblock Your Assemblies.

July 29, 2010 We ran into trouble with a web applications deployment of our only .Net product without a windows installer. Little did we know when you zip up a web application, have your on-site expert consultant download said zip file and extract it with Windows Explorer (Note: it does not happen with WinRar or 7zip) You will run into this exception trying spin up that web application. Security Exception Description: The application attempted to perform an operation not allowed by the security policy. To grant this application the required permission please contact your system administrator or change the application's trust level in the configuration file. Exception Details: System.Security.SecurityException: Request for the permission of type 'System.Web.AspNetHostingPermission, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed. Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of…

Deploying an ASP.Net MVC web application to IIS7

October 7, 2008 The next installment in my exciting series where I capture what I know about deploying Dovetail Mobile Agent which could be boiled down to How To Be a Web Server Administrator in the year 2008. Moving from IIS6 this time we take a look at getting an ASP.Net MVC application deployed to IIS7. Thankfully this is pretty easy. To try out this experience I created a Vista SP1 Enterprise virtual machine and added the IIS 7 windows feature. I know. I know. Most enterprise customers will want to use Windows 2008 as their favorite IIS7 platform, I had to use Vista because I use VMWare Server v1.x which supports Vista not Windows 2008. Revenge of the Basics Install the .Net 3.5 Framework. Add the Internet Information Services Windows Feature To Vista. In Windows 2008 this process is very similar in cases you will…

Getting WebDev.WebHost to work on 64 bit Windows

October 2, 2008 In the past I wrote on how we are doing integration testing of a web services using the WebDev.WebHost assembly. This technique has found its way into Dovetail Seeker and is really handy to do an end to end test against a live web server. I ran into trouble running the tests now that I am running a 64bit OS. You get this error when trying to spin up the test web server: An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format. It turns out the WebDev.WebHost assembly is flagged as a 32bit which forces it to be run only within a 32bit version of the framework. In my build automation nunitconsole.exe is the test runner and it is likely flagged as Any CPU and thus running in 64bit mode by default. After checking out Scott Hanselman’s post…

Creating a Windows 2008 Server x64 Developer Workstation

August 3, 2008 For about a year now I have been running Ubuntu on my personal laptop. A stab at diversity. I was playing with Rails in my spare time and also needed to brush up on my Unix. I was young… willing to experiment. My direction changed back to .Net, I am loving C# 3.0 by the way, yet I kept my Linux laptop because it was so swift and easy to use. A poor man’s Mac Book really. The only thing I couldn’t do with Hardy Heron, yes that is the name of the distribution, was .Net development with my familiar toolset. I am very very addicted to Visual Studio.Net IDE (sorry MonoDevelop, I know cop out.) Doing some development with ASP.Net MVC has had me wishing for a development machine that supports IIS 7 and I saw all the cool…

Installing ShoZu on a T-Mobile Dash with Windows Mobile 6

December 3, 2007 If you have a smart phone and like to use Flickr to share your photos look into ShoZu. ShoZu is a great way to move the pictures taken on your phone to the Flickr. You take a picture and it asks, Send To Flickr? If you have a data plan or the next time you are online the image is uploaded directly to Flickr. Very cool. What happens when you assume? I ran into problems using ShoZu with my T-Mobile Dash that has been upgraded to Windows Mobile 6. It was crashing and causing all kinds of stability issues with my phone. This morning I decided to reinstall ShoZu and figured out a simple fix and had to share. When you install ShoZu they ask for your phone number and what model phone you have. A text message is sent…

Is the Software Installed?

November 8, 2007 I went to update Windows Live Writer this morning because I am a technology whore and I like to run with the cool kids. The installer yielded a WTF basket of confusion that ended with me wondering if I had actually installed the software which, in fact, I had not. Most installers use the wizard motif with a workflow that goes something like next, accept EULA, next, next, Install, Finish. Here is my experience trying to install Windows Live Writer with accompanying internal dialog. The Download Google Windows Live Writer. --- Click on Writers Zone. --- Windows Live Writer: Out of Beta Windows Live Writer 2008 (version 12.0.1366.1026) Click on the lovely shiny Download button. Wasn't that supposed to start the download? --- Get it free Excellent, I am using software whose target audience are smug people. Click on…

Unit Testing a Web Service

November 7, 2007 Dovetail sells a web services for Clarify product that consists of a SOAP flavored web service and a handy client library. To make sure all is continuously well we have NUnit integration tests that exercise the client library making calls against the web service. Our first iteration of the testing the web service involved launching Cassini and then later the development web server that comes with Visual Studio 2005 to host our web service under test. The configuring and launching of this process (WebDev.WebServer2.exe) has been fragile and prone to failure. Yesterday while setting up a new integration server I flailed for an hour trying to get the web server running. My defeat turned into victory after I found Phil Haack's post on Using WebServer.WebDev For Unit Tests which taught me how remove our dependency on the executable web server…