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Saturday, October 30, 2010

I just want to use your website not break it

I was reading an advertisement for free phones. We are using prepaid cell phones. I was checking the price of changing from pre paid to a monthly plan. With free phones it would cost over $400 per month for 5 phones that have unlimited minutes, unlimited data, and unlimited text messaging. Doesn't include the expensive phones I see other people using. That seems ridiculously expensive, so I can't afford to buy cell phones for everyone yet.

I had one phone in my shopping cart then added four more. When I clicked Add to Cart I got this error "An error has occurred please refresh your browser". I tried again and did not get the same error. It is very annoying when I see errors using a website. Cryptic error messages seem to follow me everywhere I go.

Friday, October 22, 2010

testing effective dates

This description is similar to the application we are testing:
  1. the employee has an effective date and an expiration date
  2. the employee is assigned to a department
  3. each department has an effective date and an expiration date
  4. the employee is assigned a badge with an effective date and an expiration date
  5. the department is the top level item, then employee, and finally badge
Effective dates of the child items should be within the start and end dates of the parent item. The application is not enforcing this rule, so these dates are allowed:

Department  1/1/2009-1/1/3000
Employee     1/1/2001-1/31/2001
Badge          1/1/2005-12/31/2006

In the real application each field also has a bit field called Blocked to temporarily shut off the ability to use each item. These bit fields are Nullable, which is wrong.  Blocked shouldn't affect the effective dates.

If you deactivate the top level item it should inactivate all child items. When an item is deactivated it sets the expiration date to today.

There is also a rule that says effective date cannot be after the expiration date  - sounds like bad news for these dates:

Department  1/1/2009-11/1/2010
Employee     1/1/2011-1/1/3000
Badge          1/1/2011-1/1/3000

After deactivating the Department Employee and Badge will generate the error message "End date cannot be before start date" and the effective dates are out of order for employee and badge:

Department  1/1/2009-10/22/2010
Employee     1/1/2011-10/22/2010
Badge          1/1/2011-10/22/2010

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Outlook Instant Search Encountered a Problem

The web application threw an error message and thought for sure it was fixed by in one of the Stored Procedures. So I searched email, but used the wrong search text. I searched for  =, !=, <, <= , >, >= or and this error message: "Instant Search encountered a problem while trying to display search results. Modifying your query may resolve this problem"


I still can't find the email. I must be remembering a different application error. Searching for an error message returned an error message. Very nice

Friday, October 1, 2010

Error Running WebTest; Build Error = The "EntityDeploy" task could not be loaded from the assembly

Today I saw an error message trying to run a web test. I added some validation rules to a web test then tried running it. Also hovered over the Server Explorer tab at the same time.

I have reproduced this error; it happens if you click Run Test while hovering over Server Explorer at the same time. The error persists until you expand Server Explorer.

Error message:
The test could not be run because of the following exception: Assembly is still being loaded. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131016)

Build Error:
The "EntityDeploy" task could not be loaded from the assembly C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft.Data.Entity.Build.Tasks.dll. Assembly is still being loaded. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131016) Confirm that the ,UsingTask> declaration is correct, and that the assembly and all of its dependencies are ready