Update 'GDR 3068 for SQL Server Database Services 2005 ENU (KB948109)' could not be installed. Error code 1603.

I noticed that my local SQL Server (2005, Standard Edition) was not started every day when I came to work, so I checked the event log, and found the error message from the title of this posting. Seems that there is a bug somewhere that prevents an update from being installed. There is a workaround at this address: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925976 .

SandcastleGUI

I started using Sandcastle just a few days ago, and it was not very userfriendly, since it is a collection of command line utilities. Hence, I started looking for a GUI for Sandcastle, and found one at: http://www.inchl.nl/SandcastleGUI .

It's quite easy to use, and I was quite happy with it. I then started to create a web with documentation for one of my projects, and ran into some problems. It seems Sandcastle has problems with some long names, resulting in linebreaks in a file called "filetitles.js". This results in a javascript error saying something about unterminated string constants.

Thats why I created a small utility for fixing that file: FixFiletitlesJs.exe. Here's the code for my little utility (Console application):

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using System.IO;

namespace FixFileTitlesJs
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            if (args.Length == 0 || (args.Length > 0 && args[0] == "?"))
            {
                Console.WriteLine("USAGE: fixfiletitlesjs filename [Y | N]");
                return;
            }

            string filename = args[0];

            //creates a new filname by replacing ".js" at the end of the filename with ".bak"
            string backupFilename = Regex.Replace(filename, @"\.js$", ".bak");
            try
            {
                //create a backup file
                FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(filename);
                fi.MoveTo(backupFilename);
            }
            catch (FileNotFoundException)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("File not found.");
                Console.ReadLine();
                return;
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(string.Format("An exception was thrown while accessing the file: {0}", ex.Message));
                Console.ReadLine();
                return;
            }

            StreamWriter sw = null;
            try
            {
                sw = File.CreateText(filename);
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(string.Format("An exception was thrown while accessing the file: {0}", ex.Message));
                Console.ReadLine();
                return;
            }

            StreamReader sr = null;
            try
            {
                sr = File.OpenText(backupFilename);
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(string.Format("An exception was thrown while accessing the file: {0}", ex.Message));
                Console.ReadLine();
                return;
            }

            int i = 0,j = 0, k = 0;
            while (!sr.EndOfStream)
            {
                string line = sr.ReadLine();
                j++;
                Regex rx = new Regex("\",$");
                while (!sr.EndOfStream && !rx.IsMatch(line) && i > 0)
                {
                    line += sr.ReadLine();
                    j++;
                    k++;
                }
                sw.WriteLine(line);
                i++;
            }
            sw.Close();
            sr.Close();

            //write result
            Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Original file renamed to: {0}", backupFilename));
            Console.WriteLine(string.Format("New file created with original name: {0}", filename));
            Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Number of lines read from source: {0}", j));
            Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Number of lines written to destination: {0}", i));
            Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Number of concatenations of lines done: {0}", k));
            Console.WriteLine();

            string reply = string.Empty;

            if (args.Length >= 2 && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(args[1]))
            {
                reply = args[1];
            }

            while (reply.ToLower() != "y" && reply.ToLower() != "n")
            {
                if (reply != string.Empty) Console.WriteLine("You must answer Y or N.");
                Console.Write("Would you like to delete the backup of the original file (y/n)?");
                reply = Console.ReadLine();
            }

            if (reply.ToLower() == "y") File.Delete(backupFilename);
        }
    }
}

Using MARS with SQL Native Client

I tried using the example code from this article http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlnativeclient/archive/2006/09/27/774290.aspx  but I hade some trouble. Seems that you cannot use the System.Data.SqlClient to access MARS because it does not support using a Provider or the keyword "MARS Connection" in the connection string. This means you have to use an ADODB Connection.