The error means that there is something wrong with your code first model.  For me, it was usually some attribute that had a wrong string it.

It is annoying because it’s almost impossible to fix this error without knowing the tricks. Good news though!  The way to get around this error is to browse to your WCF RIA service. 

1) In order to make your service browsable at all (at least consistently), you should make your project use IIS rather than IIS Express.  Go into the project settings, under the web tab, and make sure “Use Local IIS Web server” is selected and “Use IIS Express” is not selected.

2) Now you need to find the URL your domain service uses. 

2.a) Make sure “Show all files” is enabled at the top of your Solution Explorer window. 

2.b) In your Silverlight project, expand the folder “Generated_Code”.  Open the file at the root of that folder.  Search for “http://”.  You’ll find a URL that looks similar to:

http://localhost/{WcfRiaServiceProjectName}/{Domain-Service-Namespace-And-Type-Name}.svc

3) Compile the web project by itself so that you have the most up to date error showing when you browse to the URL.

4) Browse to the URL!  It should give a much better error message.  Make sure you have the web project showing exception details. If you don’t, the web page will tell you how to do so.

1) I had various Citrix and Cisco VPN related products installed, so I uninstalled all of them.  During one of these installs, I was prompted about a VirtualBox install being suspended, though I don’t know if that was relevant.

2) I went into Device Manager and deleted some extra network adapters I had lying around.  The one that stuck out was one that was installed by OpenVPN a while back, even though OpenVPN is no longer installed.

Next time I tried the install, it went without a hitch!

Let me explain:

I come from a time when web development made you want to cry.  I happen from a time when each browser you chose to support would require one to develop an independent set of hacked CSS rules, JavaScript, and often, HTML; and each of these browsers would require testing after each and every change.  I’ve come from a time when debugging in JavaScript meant inserting “alert” statements in dozens of places within the code and then hitting refresh in a browser.  I come from a time when large web applications would contain scores of redundant code, and scores more of unused styles and JavaScript, which would be destined to remain in the application as if they were naught but malignant tumors.

Don’t get me wrong: application development is my passion.  But doing what needed to be done to get a web application working wasn’t development… it was pre-ordained bug fixing.

But as time progressed, things became more hopeful.  XML gave us a flexible way to store data.  Then XHTML gave us a way to read web pages without concern for misinterpretation.  Then SOAP allowed us the ability to share data with others.  Then Silverlight and Moonlight gave us hope of finally ridding ourselves of the shackles that are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, forever.  Then Windows Phone 7 arrives, promising the market share the world needs in order to take XAML seriously.  And even if you chose not to embrace XAML, you knew that the holy grail was just around the corner.

But then Apple slew Moonlight. (And I will forever curse you, Apple, for your proprietary spells have cast a gloom on us simple software folk.)

And then the masses began to talk of HTML5 as though they’d forgotten how his ancestors had ravaged our towns.

And now I can’t help but wonder, as we progress into the future: will future generations of programmers be forced to deal with the same crap that we had to deal with, over and over again?

Will the technologies used in application development prove to follow a cyclic pattern?  Clothing style does this… just think of how both the 70’s and 80’s styles have come around.  In said fashion, will one generation reintroduce hacker mentalities and force the subsequent generation to deal with the consequences?

Or will advancement be more like some technological tug-of-war between the heroic Architects and the evil Hackers… both alternately giving and then gaining ground as one seeks to build and the other seeks to destroy?

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Thank you!

I have had a strong desire to develop applications using models for years and years, now.  You can call it Model-driven development (MDD) or Model-driven engineering (MDE) or model-driven architecture (MDA) or whatever you want, but I have no doubt that it is the eventual future of software engineering.

In fact, being in the business as long as I have, a lot of common development tasks become pretty mundane.  And at this point, Software architecture and MDE are the only two things I still enjoy doing.

In the past, I’ve been able to develop only small portions or even a single layer of an application from models.  However, for the last couple years, I’ve taken it upon myself to make MDE a serious pet project, and I was able to re-write a large portion of my company’s flagship product using models and then generating code from those models.  Additionally, I was able to take portions of that effort and use it to generate portions of the existing application.

So what’s the good news?  Well, in the near future, a company may be hiring me to do something similar with their product, and I think this would be most exciting task I’ve undertaken in my 18 years of software development experience!

Here’s to hoping that this project becomes a reality!

This means no Flash, no Java, no Silverlight (or any other Microsoft-derived infrastructure), Moonlight (or any other Novell-derived infrastructure, including MonoTouch).

What the #**#!, you say?  …as well, you should.  You don’t believe me?  Here is the relevant section from their agreement:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

Thank you, Miguel de Icaza, for pointing this out.

That’s why I was a bit excited when I read today that Obama was considering denying tax credit to companies that ship jobs overseas.  In principle, I’m not much a fan of Obama due his super-star status getting him elected, however, if he actually invoked this idea, I would worship the land he walked on.

Steps like these obviously need to be made.  I don’t understand why people are so short sited to not realize that money that leaves the United States has little reason to come back.  I like to think of countries (read: economies) as bins of money.  People standing in our bin just keep throwing it into everybody else’s bins.  This is obviously from outsourcing jobs, but less obviously, even from charities (when you see those pictures of the ruined houses in Haiti and help build it up to ten times what it used to be, no one ever thinks about the fact that the money they donate is removed from our own economy).

As a “P.S.”, I don’t much get into politics or economics, so this opinion article may seem a bit simple to those better educated in those fields.

What most people don’t care about is that Apple has always been a very closed, very proprietary company.  That is why they lost the first war against IBM.  This time around, however, they hired some marketing geniuses (to whom I give unconditional kudos), which blinded everyone to Apple’s core philosophies.

Microsoft’s Windows Mobile was never much of a platform because, as I’m sure they now realize, they only put a half-assed effort into developing it.  This is what Microsoft always does until they have a reason to do otherwise.

But then comes Android, which I see as a very large threat to Apple’s closed platform.  Sure, it’s been here for a little while, but we’re just now seeing some real phones being built that use it.  At first it will only appeal to geeks and developers because it is so open.  However, it is only a matter of time before the applications surpass those that currently exist on the iPhone.

I say the Android applications will surpass those available on the iPhone because the Android is so much more open to developers.  There are already 10,000+ apps available to it, and this number is bound to grow exponentially as the platform is embraced.  Linux-minded developers aren’t the only target, either, due to the existence of Microsoft’s Silverlight platform that the Mono project has developed.

Because of this, unless Apple makes their platform more open (e.g. removing restrictions from their 3rd party software distribution network), I foresee the software development community embracing the open Android platform, and the Android taking, at very least, a large chunk of Apple’s market share.

Unfortunately for Apple, if history is any indication, Apple has no intention of ever making things more open.

Sooo…. here I come top position!  hahah…