Selected Export Objects not Currently Available for Export

I finally tracked down why some postings are listed in the "Selected Export objects not currently available for Export" section of the Export report. It lists Postings:

• that do not have an approved version (e.g. never been published or in a WaitingForModeratorApproval state)
  
• based on templates which do not have approved versions. You could have created and saved the template but never checked it in. The template must be checked in at least once for an approved version to exist.

Emptying the Disk Cache

Here's a quick way to empty the disk cache:
1. Open the SCA
2. Click on the Security tab
3. Change the MCMS System Account. 
4. Stop the WWW Service
5. Stop the AESecurity Service
6. Check that all files in the /rdonlyres/ folder are deleted (otherwise, manually delete them)
7. Start the AESecurity Service
8. Start the WWW Service

Restarting the AESecurity serives effectively empties the disk cache.

A Test for GUIDs

MCMS tags each object with a GUID and one of the most efficient ways of retrieving them from the repository is to use the Searches.GetByGuid() method. Simply pass in valid GUID string and you get the requested HierarchyItem.
 
Well, that works, *if* you have the correct GUID. When you pass in a badly form GUID, say when forgetting the opening { and closing } braces, or miss out any of its hyphens, it coughs up this rather obscure message "Server ODBC error. Please contact Administrator". This same message appears on several other kinds of errors but most of the time, the cause is a bad GUID input parameter.
 
To get around this, here's an IsGuid() method that returns a boolean indicating whether the input string parameter is a valid string: 
 
private static bool IsGuid(string guid)
{
   try
   {
      Guid testGuid = new Guid(guid);
      return(true);
   }
   catch
   {
      return (false);
   }
}

Before calling the Searches.GetByGuid() method, test the GUID to see if its valid whenever you are not sure. It could save you some hours of troubleshooting :-)

Hello

For some time now, I've been thinking of starting a blog. I'm a little embarrassed to say that despite having spent most of my life with my trusty computer, I've never tried blogging.
 
So here I am now. 
 
I'm a developer from the tropical sunny island of Singapore. We have good weather all year round and lots of good food. It's nice to live and work here. If you are new to the region and are planning a visit, drop me a note and I can recommend you some must-see places.
 
Lately, my work centers around content management systems and in particular Microsoft Content Management Server. I have created and supported several web sites based on it ranging from small department web sites to large critical ones. Here, I plan to write a little about what I do and post some bits of code that have helped me. Hopefully, you will find them useful too.