Sharing my knowledge, experience, learning using this Blog on various Microsoft Technologies like WPF, C#, XAML, Silverlight, LINQ, WCF, Threading, ASP.Net, SQL Server.
Recently I was facing one issue with Visual Studio 2010. When I change some code in Visual Studio 2010 and hit
F5, it is not building application and running old compiled version. Every time
I want to debug an application, I have to first manually build application and
then hit F5 key to debug my application. Usually visual studio automatically builds
application on hitting F5 key.
I found interesting solutions from internet to resolve this
issue. You need to open the Configuration Manager from Debug Dropdown or right
click on Solution and open Configuration Manager Window. Now click on Build
Checkbox.
Another solution would be useful if your Project is out of
date or you have installed newer version. Go to Tool -> Option -> Project
and Solutions -> Build and Run from Visual Studio. Now select “Always build”
or “Prompt to build” option of “On Run, when project are out of date”.
Hope this small Tip might help you to fix this issue.
You can create SSIS package to perform file related
operations like copy file or directory, create file or directory, delete file
or directory, rename file etc. You just need to drag File System Task item from
tool bar to control flow tab or simply double click on File System Task item from
tool bar. Double click on File System Task item it will open editor dialog
window. You can set source and destination connection properties based
on selected file operation. You
can see below the list of various file operations available to perform with file system
task.
Below is the File System Task editor dialog which displays
properties to be set to perform particular task. The available tasks for File
System Task are displayed in above image.
As per selected operation, you need to specify source and destination
connection or only specify source connection. You need to specify either
existing connection or create new connection. Below is the new file connection
dialog.
You can select usage type as create file, create folder,
existing file or existing folder. Specify file name with folder location. After setting all the parameters, you can execute package and your selected
file operation successfully completed.
Below is the video which explains how to create and execute file
system task with different file operations.
SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services) is excellent component comes along
with SQL Server. SSIS is used to perform data migration task. This is also called
as ETL (Extraction, Transformation and Loading) tool. In Data warehousing
applications, SSIS is used to perform various operations like importing/exporting
data from different sources, perform transformation on data, doing calculation etc.
To start with SSIS, Business Intelligence Development Studio
must be installed on your machine and make sure that SQL Server Integration
Service is running (Start->Run-> services.msc). After that you need to
create SSIS package first. Package is collection of control flow elements, data
flow elements, events handlers, variables and configurations. Package is unit
of work which can be debugged, executed and saved.
In this post, I will explain how to create simple SSIS
package using import export wizard. SSIS has many other features which I will
explain in my later posts.
Below are the steps and screenshots to create SSIS package
using Import Export wizard.
1. Open Import Export Wizard from Start -> SQL Server ->
Import Export Data or Open SQL Server Management Studio and write click on
database from which you want to export/import data select task and Export Data.
2. SQL Server Import and Export wizard opens
3. Select source of data. (In
below image I have selected SQL Server Data Source and AdventureWorks2008R2
database from where I want to export)
4. Select destination (In below image I have selected Flat File
as destination there are many other options available you can select as per
your requirement. You need to provide flat file name and if you want to see
column name on first row check below displayed checkbox.).
5. Select Table (you can select one or more table to export
data or write your own query)
6. Select Table from where you want to export data with row delimiter
and column delimeter.
Click on Edit Mappings button to select which column data
you want to export at your destination file.
Click on preview to see your data
7. Click on Save SSIS Package and File System.
8. Specify the location and name where you want to save SSIS
package in local drive.
9. Verify the choices made in wizard and click on finish.
10. Package will start executing and after completion of
execution check where package executed successfully or fails.
As per above image, package executed successfully and 504
rows transferred to flat file. See below image which shows column name in first
row and below comma separated data.
The similar way you can import data from any source to any
destination using Import and Export wizard.
Let’s have a look on created SSIS package. SSIS package has
.dtsx extension. In above exercise we have created package named
ProductPackage.dtsx. Double clicked on this file and it will open in Visual Studio see below
screenshot.
This image shows one data flow task created on control flow tab.
On double click that task you can reach to Data Flow tab and
it shows how data transfers from source to destinations.
You can also watch below video which demonstrate above mentioned all the steps and explains how create simple SSIS package using import export wizard.
Hope you liked this post. Please leave your feedback in comments section.
Many of you might aware about Build Events feature of Visual
Studio. In this post i will explain little bit about Pre-build and Post-build events and their usage.
Sometimes you might need to execute some additional tasks
just before and after building your Visual Studio solution. So for this Visual Studio
provides nice way to do that using Build Events. You can specify commands inside
pre-build and post-build command line. You can find build events tab inside project
properties.
As mentioned in above image, you can specify almost all DOS commands inside pre-build and post-build event as per your requirement. Post-build event
gives you more control over Pre-build command line execution. You can decide when
to execute post-build event from given three options displayed in above image.
Let’s try to understand with simple example.
On successful build I want to copy my executable to some
specific folder on my local drive. So in above example I have used xcopy
command to copy files from one directory to another. In above example I have
used ‘$(ProjectDir)’ macro which will gives me the current project directory. There
are more macros available to use for various purposes see below image. These macros can be used to
specify location of project or solution, project name, extension, output
directory, configuration name etc.
You can use this feature in many scenarios like processing or executing batch file, copy assemblies to specific location, generate resources file using tool like resgen.exe etc. This isreally nice and useful feature provided by visual studio.
Hope you liked this small tip. Please leave your feedback in comments section.
In project life cycle you might need to create or access
various builds like Development, Testing, User Acceptance Testing, Production
etc. Visual Studio provides Configuration Manager Toolbar to change, create or
access builds. By default solution has two builds Debug and Release.
Typically debug build is used to debug and detect errors
(compile-time and runtime) from solution or project. Once project or solution
development is complete and ready to deploy than project or solution should be
built in Release mode. Release builds enables code optimization and enables
fast execution of program.
You can also change or create new configuration using
configuration dropdown available on standard toolbar.
For add or change configuration you can select configuration
manager from any of the drop down. If sometimes configuration or platform
drop downs are not visible on standard tool bar of visual studio in such case
you can add those externallyby clicking on customize menu item of tools menu.
The Configuration Manager Dialog will appear.
Similarly you can open Configuration Manager Dialog from
right click of your solution and click on Configuration Manager (below image).
You can change or edit configuration and platform for each
project under solution.
The same configuration used to develop application to choose
correct config file or connection string or other configuration specific task. Let’s
have a look on below code.
#if DEV
Console.WriteLine("DEV Configuration...");
#elif QA
Console.WriteLine("QA Configuration...");
#endif
As per above code, based on selected configuration either
DEV or QA the appropriate code will execute. One more thing, by default Debug
and Release configuration added with project and during compilation it will
create Debug and Release folder under Bin folder located at solution folder. If
we added new configurations in our case DEV and QA then respective folder will
get created under solution’s Bin folder and respective resource and assembly
will be added to that.
Sometimes you might need to build multiple solutions or complex project in particular sequence. In such case you can build your
project or solutions using command line or batch file. In this post I will
explain simple way to build project or solution using command line tool or
creating batch file.
Devenv allows you to build your solution or project using command line. It also
allows related multiple operations such as clean
solution, rebuild solution or deploy solution etc. To execute commands, you need to
open Visual Studio command prompt available inside visual studio tools under all
programs of start menu. You can find multiple options available with devenv
using below command.
Devenv /?
Let’s start with simple example which builds solution using
command prompt.
Devenv TestConsoleApplication.sln /Build Debug
The above command builds TestConsoleApplication solution in
Debug configuration mode. To build this solution with Release mode you just
need to write Release instead of Debug in above code.
Similarly you can clean and rebuild solution using below
code.
Devenv TestConsoleApplication.sln /Clean
Devenv TestConsoleApplication.sln /Rebuild Debug
We can also build specific project with project build
configuration along with solution.
Below command opens solution from command prompt and runs
the application. If any exception occurred while running application it will log
the same in MyErrorLog.txt file.
The above command runs the application and log exception if
any into separate file mentioned with /out switch.
We can also reset Visual Studio’s setting using below
line of code. This is nice and great feature which can be useful when something
is missing from IDE or IDE is not working property. This will restore back all
the default settings of Visual Studio’s IDE.
Devenv /ResetSettings
MSBuild.exe
For build related task, it is recommended by Microsoft to use
Msbuild.exe. Msbuild.exe builds project or solution with specified options. You
can find multiple options using below help command.
msbuild.exe /?
To build solution using msbuild you can use below line of
code.
