MSIGMAN

Software Developer | Architect | Thrill Seeker in Austin, TX

MSIGMAN - Software Developer | Architect | Thrill Seeker in Austin, TX

TFS 2012 Update 2 Error – TF400898

After upgrading Team Foundation Server 2012 to Update 2, we started to get an error when opening a PBI or Bug via the web portal.  This was the error:

TF400898: An Internal Error Occurred.

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Not terribly helpful… Anyhow, after searching the web there were some similar-sounding issues but none of them helped.  In this case it turns out the problem was that non-Administrators received the error, but Collection Administrations did not get the error.  I’m not sure why that is the case yet, but will continue to look into it.

As a temporary solution for anyone with this issue, try giving increased permission to your team.

Telerik RadComboTree – A ComboBox with collapsible items

Background

One of the most useful existing controls in the Telerik RadControls suite is the RadComboBox.  It offers multi-column support to template support, anything you need in a drop-down can be rendered in RadComboBox. The control provides a rich set of features which include: client-side API with events, load-on-demand, auto-complete, filtering, multi-column support, highly customizable appearance through skins, content template support and much more. All this flexibility comes packaged in a control that renders lightweight, semantic HTML for optimum page performance and SEO.

The one option it doesn’t have out of the box, is the ability to group nodes into a hierarchical relationship and collapse/expand them, similar to the RadTreeView control.

Introducing the RadComboTree

This control basically combines the ComboBox and the TreeView to have a drop-down hierarchical list of nodes that can optionally have checkboxes.

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PHP5 substr() breaking change got me after all these years

I recently migrated a site from PHP4 to PHP5 and though I went through and updated all the code to be PHP5 compatible… I thought… I missed one minute detail buried in the documentation of PHP 5.2.2 (this change was not in PHP 5.0):

If the start parameter indicates the position of a negative truncation or beyond, false is returned. Other versions get the string from start.

What does this mean?  In my case I was truncating some line break characters from the end of a string, which had been working fine for at least 5 years on PHP4, like so:

$cur_row = substr($cur_row,'',-2);  //This works up to and including PHP 5.2.1

However as of 5.2.2 it started returning FALSE instead!  Talk about difficult to track down…

Anyhow, the updated syntax is as follows:

$cur_row = substr($cur_row,0,-2);  //This works on all versions

http://php.net/manual/en/function.substr.php

Telerik Test Studio and TFS 2012 integration issue

When integrating Test Studio with TFS 2012 we observed a small bug.  We have been able to reproduce it, and also come up with a fix that has been working for a while now.

The bug:

  1. When installing the Runtime edition of Test Studio on a standalone machine (without also having full Test Studio installed), the DLL ArtOfTest.WebAiiVSIP.dll is not installed.  This DLL is required to execute test lists from TFS.  The issue does not occur if we use the Telerk Scheduler to run the test list.  However in our case we are using TFS to execute the tests during a build.
  2. The other problem is that a registry entry is not created, which also is required when executing a Test Studio test lists via TFS: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\ EnterpriseTools\QualityTools\TestTypes.  See screenshot for full details.

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Error applying SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2

If you get an error applying Service Pack 2 to SQL 2008 R2:

The patch installer has failed to update the following instance: MSSQLSERVER. To determine the reason for failure, review the log files.

And then if you go to the log file it mentions

Product: SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 BI Development Studio – Update ‘Service Pack 2 for SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio 2008 (64-bit) (KB2630458)’ could not be installed. Error code 1603.

The problem occurs if you have deleted any files with the .log extension, or used the Microsoft Disk Cleanup wizard.  To fix it, go to Start > All Programs > Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 >  Configuration Tools > SQL Server Installation Center and run the wizard.  When prompted to choose which instance, select the option titled “<<Repair shared features only>>” and click Next, Next, Repair.  Then re-run the Service Pack and everything should install correctly.