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Easily access information from any database and publish it via a web service – Part 2 – The Web Service

After we have configured the connection to our Database and created our model ( see the last post for more details ), we will jump now to the creation of our new Web Service.   Create a Web Service Lets save our changes and add a new item. As mentioned already in my last post , I personally prefer the “older” asmx style web services most of the time. So we choose “ Web Service ” template for now (if you can’t find it easily, simply search for it) and give it a name. I’ll use MDT.asmx for this...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: Webservice, MDT, Entity Framework, Development, MMS

Easily access information from any database and publish it via a web service – Part 1 – The Database

OK, (probably) my two last post regarding my MMS 2011 sessions, if I haven’t missed something important . To be able to make our Deployments more dynamic and as unattended as possible, we need to have all the information available, that we need to take decisions automatically . We typically use information from the local hardware, the customsettings.ini and maybe the MDT Database. If we are really advanced, we also make use of some web services like the Deployment Web Service to drive our deployment...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: Webservice, MDT, Entity Framework, Database, Development, MMS

ELMAH – a great way of Troubleshooting Web Applications

Recently I found an incredible useful solution that will be able to help you troubleshooting errors and especially exceptions of web applications like the MDT Web FrontEnd (Sadly not for pure web services). One typical way of troubleshooting them is to write all important information into a log file as the Deployment web service does (see the last post for more information on the implementation of NLog in the Deployment web service ). While often pretty useful it covers just the “ expected ” part...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: Frontend, Development

Add logging to your applications. NLog for beginners.

One of the most important aspects of your applications and scripts (beside their actual purpose)  is to log information about the currently running actions. On daily usage it might be useful to just verify if everything is working OK, or to have some kind of reporting based on this (logparser is quite helpful for such tasks). But as soon as a problem arises, this information is of huge importance to troubleshoot the current problem. So actually you can’t log to much, only to less. Logging in...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: Webservice, Frontend, Development

Has been a while …

since my last post. And I just wanted to take the opportunity to send a quick “ I’m still alive ” and give an overview of what is going to happen in the next time. In the last two posts ( VCS - Part 1 , VCS - Part 2 ) I wrote about Version\Revision Control Systems in general and how they could be of use, even for scripting or administrative purposes (yes, one article is still waiting to be published ;-) ). As not being a professional developer those typical developer tools are sometimes still new...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: Custom Scripts, Webservice, Active Directory, Boot Wizard, MDT, Frontend, Development

Keep track on your changes – Part II – Basic steps on Version Control

Ok, in the last part we spend some time on the basic idea of Version Control Systems, installed a subversion server, a nice client to connect to the server and created a repository we can store our files in. Now it’s time to get some practice. The example steps shown here assume an installation as shown in the last post . And best would be if you just follow these examples on your own installation. It will take you roughly half an hour and you will be able to handle your first projects completely...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: Development

Keep track on your changes – Part I – Version Control is not for Developers only

How often did you find yourself in a situation where you “just” wanted to implement a little change or have spent hours or even weeks on work into something just to recognize that you busted it somewhere on the way? How often did something suddenly break and your colleague tells you “I haven’t done anything! For sure!!! … Oh well, I just wanted to add/change/remove …” and he is 100% sure it can’t be the reason and undoing what he did (at least the parts he can still remember) doesn’t solve the issue...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: Development, Administration