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Friday, November 22, 2013

How to fix Configuration system failed to initialize

Configuration system failed to initialize- Issue in .NET

Problem : 

I was working on a console application which will work as a Task Scheduler on the server, so I created a console application in Visual Studio 2012, so the project was created with Target Framework as v4.5, but the problem with that was, neither our QA server or Production server for that app had Framework v4.5 installed on them. So what I did was, I went to the project properties and changed the Target Framework to 4.0 instead of 4.5 and tried to run on Debug, thats it, I keep getting the error whenever the application was trying to read configuration values using ConfigurationManager.AppSettings and the error reads as below

"Configuration system failed to initialize".

Solution : 

Like most of us, I copied the exception details and googled it and this is what I got as a probable resolution from Stack overflow.



make sure that your config file (web.config if web, or app.config if windows) in your project starts as:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
   <configSections>
      <sectionGroup name="applicationSettings" type="System.Configuration.ApplicationSettingsGroup, System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" >
      <section name="yourProjectName.Properties.Settings" type="System.Configuration.ClientSettingsSection, System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" requirePermission="false" />
</sectionGroup>

The above answer and more such similar answers on the internet points to the configSettings section & has been marked as an answer by most people so I guess this has resolved their issues but not in my case. It still gave me the errors. So this is what I did to get it resolved.

If you have an already running Console Application like me lets say in v4.5, then 
1. If that application is open in visual studio make sure its running in the current version, just check-in your changes to source control and close the studio.
2. Open the *.csproject file on notepad and change the targetFramework from 4.5 to 4.0 like this 
"<TargetFrameworkVersion>v4.0</TargetFrameworkVersion>" and save the file.
3. Open the project now on visual studio and go to App.config file and make the change in the file under element startup and make .NETFramework, Version=v4.0 like below

<startup> 
        <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0" />
    </startup>

Now if you run your application, it should run just fine, atleast in my case.


Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Unable to Resolve Service Name, Oracle connection from ASP.NET or SSIS Business Intelligence Studio

Unable to Resolve Service Name, Oracle connection from ASP.NET or SSIS Business Intelligence Studio

Problem

In one of my recent projects, I had this peculiar problem where I was not able to connect to Oracle Database from my ASP.NET application and every time it gave me an error like "Unable to resolve service name", although my tnsnames.ora file was correct and moreover, I was able to connect to the same oracle datasource from the Oracle SQL Developer studio, it was just driving me crazy.

Solution

One quick solution I figured out for both my connecting to oracle from the BIDS and Microsoft Visual Studio web configuration like below

Lets say your tnsnames.ora reads like below

oradb.mydomain.com =
(DESCRIPTION =
  (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = host.mydomain.com)(PORT = 1521))
  (LOAD_BALANCE = YES)
  (CONNECT_DATA =
   (SERVER = DEDICATED)
   (SERVICE_NAME = oradb.mydomain.com)
   (FAILOVER_MODE =
   (TYPE = SELECT)(METHOD = BASIC)(RETRIES = 180)(DELAY = 5)
   )
  )
)

This is what has to be done when putting the connection string inside Visual Studio to get it connected to the oracle database.

<connectionStrings>
<add name="myConn" connectionString="Server=host.mydomain.com/oradb.mydomain.com; User Id=guest; Password=guest" providerName="System.Data.OracleClient" />

So above all that I did was to mention the host name along with the service name. Mind you, there is one important thing here, the oracle data source is running on the default port 1521.

The problem associated with connecting to Oracle datasource using an OLEDBDatsource control on BIDS is slightly more than just the connection to the oracle datasource if you are working on a 64 bit machine/PC. The BIDS is a 32 bit application and so you have to make sure that you have a 32 bit oracle client installed on your PC along with the 64 client of Oracle otherwise the BIDS may not be able to detect the "Oracle Provider for OLE DB" driver from the PC that you are working on. 

Once this is resolved, like the visual studio, here also we will mention the DataSource in the connection string as host/service_name in the connection used as shown in the screen shot shown below.

In the connection manager above, the Server or file name is mentioned as "host.mydomain.com/oradb.mydomain.com". But here also please note that in my case the oracle datasource was running on default port 1521. 

Thants it ! Happy coding !

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Reading XML nodes with namespaces in SQL Server

Reading XML nodes with namespaces in SQL Server


Like me, many of you might have gone through situations where you might had to parse and read XML in SQL Server. SQL Server 2005 onward have a very good functional support to read XML. Lets go over some examples on how to do so 

1. The first XML is an xml with persons details and contact details and here is how we can read that below

DECLARE @MyXML XML
SET @MyXML = '<SampleXML>
<Person>
<firstName>Kaushik</firstName>
<lastName>Ghosh</lastName>
<skill>ASP.NET</skill>
<language montherTongue="Bengali">Hindi</language>
<age>31</age>
</Person>
<Contacts>
<primaryEmail>primary@mydomain.com</primaryEmail>
<secondaryEmail>secondary@mydomain.com</secondaryEmail>
<primaryPhone>1234567890</primaryPhone>
<secondaryPhone>Melon</secondaryPhone>
</Contacts>
</SampleXML>'

SELECT
a.b.value('Person[1]/firstName[1]','varchar(10)') AS firstName,
a.b.value('Person[1]/lastName[1]','varchar(10)') AS lastName,
a.b.value('Person[1]/skill[1]','varchar(10)') AS skill,
a.b.value('Person[1]/language[1]/@montherTongue','varchar(10)')+ ',' + a.b.value('Person[1]/language[1]','varchar(10)') AS language,
a.b.value('Person[1]/age[1]','varchar(10)') AS age,
a.b.value('Contacts[1]/primaryEmail[1]','varchar(30)') AS primaryEmail,
a.b.value('Contacts[1]/secondaryEmail[1]','varchar(30)') AS secondaryEmail,
a.b.value('Contacts[1]/primaryPhone[1]', 'varchar(10)') AS primaryPhone,
a.b.value('Contacts[1]/secondaryPhone[1]', 'varchar(10)') AS secondaryPhone
FROM @MyXML.nodes('SampleXML') a(b)

In the above example it works fine, when the nodes are not repeating, but what if the XML has repeating nodes, please see the next example. This time we will take an example which will have namespaces, nested nodes with attributes and also multiple repeating nodes.

DECLARE @xml_text xml;
SET @xml_text = '
<towers xmlns="http://www.mydomain.org/schemas/xmls" version="1.4.1.0">
<tower xmlns="http://www.mydomain.org/schemas/xmls" uid="2183256">
<name>J.D. TAYLOR 24 #1</name>
<numAPI>0100320139</numAPI>
<towerLocation uid="Location1">
<latitude uom="dega">20.329705810</latitude>
<longitude uom="dega">-27.720651970</longitude>
</towerLocation>
<towerDatum uid="GL">
<code>GL</code>
<name>Ground Level</name>
</towerDatum>
<operator>Mobile comp1</operator>
<country>Unknown</country>
<county>DuPage</county>
<state>Illinois</state>
<timeZone>-00:00</timeZone>
<commonData>
<dTimCreation>2013-10-04T18:51:09.377</dTimCreation>
<dTimLastChange>2013-10-04T18:51:09.377</dTimLastChange>
</commonData>
</tower>
<tower xmlns="http://www.mydomain.org/schemas/xmls" uid="2183256">
<name>K.D. TAYLOR 24 #1</name>
<numAPI>0100320140</numAPI>
<towerLocation uid="Location2">
<latitude uom="dega">10.329705811</latitude>
<longitude uom="dega">-17.720651970</longitude>
</towerLocation>
<towerDatum uid="SL">
<code>SL</code>
<name>Sea Level</name>
</towerDatum>
<operator>Mobile Company 2</operator>
<country>Unknown</country>
<county>Cook</county>
<state>ILLINOIS</state>
<timeZone>-00:00</timeZone>
<commonData>
<dTimCreation>2013-11-04T18:51:09.377</dTimCreation>
<dTimLastChange>2013-11-04T18:51:09.377</dTimLastChange>
</commonData>
</tower>
</towers>';

with xmlnamespaces('http://www.mydomain.org/schemas/xmls' as towers,
default 'http://www.mydomain.org/schemas/xmls')
    SELECT  T.Item.value('(name/text())[1]', 'varchar(200)') as name,
T.Item.value('(numAPI/text())[1]', 'varchar(30)') as numAPI,
T.Item.value('towerLocation[1]/@uid[1]', 'varchar(20)') as towerLocation,
T.Item.value('towerLocation[1]/latitude[1]', 'varchar(20)') + ' ' 
+ T.Item.value('towerLocation[1]/latitude[1]/@uom[1]', 'varchar(10)') as latitude,
T.Item.value('towerLocation[1]/longitude[1]', 'varchar(20)') + ' ' 
+ T.Item.value('towerLocation[1]/longitude[1]/@uom[1]', 'varchar(10)') as longitude,
T.Item.value('towerDatum[1]/@uid[1]', 'varchar(10)') as towerDatumCode,
T.Item.value('towerDatum[1]/code[1]', 'varchar(10)') + ' or ' 
+ T.Item.value('towerDatum[1]/name[1]', 'varchar(20)') as towerDatum,
T.Item.value('(operator/text())[1]', 'varchar(200)') as operator,
T.Item.value('(country/text())[1]', 'varchar(30)') as country,
T.Item.value('(county/text())[1]', 'varchar(30)') as county,
T.Item.value('(state/text())[1]', 'varchar(30)') as state,
T.Item.value('(timeZone/text())[1]', 'varchar(30)') as timeZone,
T.Item.value('commonData[1]/dTimCreation[1]', 'varchar(30)') as created,
T.Item.value('commonData[1]/dTimLastChange[1]', 'varchar(30)') as changed
    FROM    @xml_text.nodes ( 'towers/tower' ) AS T(item)

The above XML is a more realistic example of XML data that you might need to parse in the database while doing some sort of integration.