Odd Workflow Error

I got an odd error when developing a simple workflow in MOSS with WF the other day. Our workflow was simple enough, we were adding tasks then sending out alert emails once it was initiated then sending out emails on completion. All fairly straight forward although the email was sending even though the debugger was telling us that all code was being run. As usual MOSS was being extremely helpful with the error message “Error Occurred”. Taking a closer look at the MOSS logs under “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\LOGS” we found that this error had occurred “Correlation value specified does not match the already initialized correlation“.

The problem was that we’d used the same CorrelationToken through the whole workflow, but email task need a different token to the Create/Delete Tasks. I’m not sure why this is the story but I’m going to look into it a bit further over the next few days and get deeper into how the WF architecture works to actually get a reason for this, but in the meantime if you have the same problem here’s the quick fix for you.

Finally Passed the Biztalk Certification

I finally got around to sitting the 70-235 – MCTS Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions Using Microsoft BizTalk Server Exam yesterday. In all I was expecting a harder exam but I’m happy to report it was actually fairly straight forward. My advice to anyone thinking about taking this exam is really know everything about the BAM. It’s fairly heavily based on it. Otherwise people with some commercial exposure should be able to get through reasonably easily.

From here I’ve only got one more certification that I need to do which is the 70-542 – MCTS Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Application Development which I’m hoping to get in the next couple of months.

UAC Disabled

I’ve been a full time user of Vista since the RC’s around September 06. I remained adamant that I was going to use the UAC as much as I could. This week after much pain, the UAC was turned off, and my vista pc’s now seem to be running like a dream. One of the major annoying things seemed to be related to flash plugin’s with IE. One of the worst offenders was www.news.com.au which would crash IE with no explanation constantly. Since UAC has been turned off, not a single crash.

Having originally come from the Unix world the idea of effectively doing a ‘sudo‘ in Windows, I feel, is very necessary. Anyone who has had spyware rip through their system would welcome the thought of having to specifically allow a system changing event to occur, rather than it just happening. One problem with UAC appears that as developers most don’t like having restrictions on their PC so turn it off by default. This does make life easier while developing but means that the applications we write are seldom tested correctly.

Anyway I’m going to go through a proper post mortem on what actually seems to go wrong with UAC and post here another day. I just wanted to share my “Quick Fix” with you all. Here’s a quick trick on how to enable & disable UAC.

1. From the run command launch “MSCONFIG”.
2. In the “System Configuration” dialogue that appears goto the “Tools” Tab
3. Scroll down the list and select either the “Disable UAC” or “Enable UAC” depending on whether it’s getting enabled or disabled (see pic below).
4. Click the “Launch” button then when completed reboot, log back on and you should be in business.