‘Type is not marked as Serializable’ error!

I have just installed Windows Server 2008 as my main OS to avoid the hassle of waiting for the VM to load up and the slow environment on the guest OS.  So the next task at hand was to configure my environment with MOSS 2007 with FBA configured, well that all went nice until I was trying to deploy my solution to my SharePoint site, then things started to get a bit interesting.  My previous environment I had WSS 3.0 running and I have my solution working on there like a charm, now I upgraded my environment to have MOSS 2007 (which is WSS 3.0 with a lot more features) and was ready to use my custom application pages that were deployed via wsp solution into my SharePoint site.  A couple of the custom app pages were using Gridviews in them, and they started giving me this weird serialization error:

Type ‘type‘ in Assembly ‘assembly‘ is not marked as serializable.   at System.Runtime.Serialization.FormatterServices.InternalGetSerializableMembers(RuntimeType type)
at System.Runtime.Serialization.FormatterServices.GetSerializableMembers(Type type, StreamingContext context)

and it was driving me absolutely nuts, I was checking my config files over and over to make sure that I didnt miss any of the FBA or profile related configurations, I was checking the database and my stored procedures over and over, and then debuged my code several times and had some help from my collegue Michael Lotter (SharePoint Dev and Admin genious), and nothing came up, I researched a bit about the error and blogs were talking about things not related to SharePoint at all so I started thinking thats something is really wrong with my code.  But then I read a article about a customer for Telerik complaining about a similar issue in the following url:

http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/thread/b311D-tdhgt.aspx

and in there they said something about the <sessionState > and the mode not being supported, so I went and compared my 2 web.config files again, and found that in WSS 3.0 my web.config for the my web app did not have that entry in there, but my new web.config for MOSS 2007 did.  So I commented that line out and it worked like a charm

Installed Windows Server 2008 64 bit on my Thinkpad T61!!!

So after a long time of putting up with loading up VM on my Vista and dealing with it being slow, I have decided to give Windows Server 2008 a try. So I will be able to do my developement and SharePoint work right of my host machine.  I have heard many conflicting reports about loosing a lot of functionality when running a Windows Server as my host, but I found a great tool that would do most of the work for you with a few clicks.  The name of the tool I believe is Serv08Convert10, and you can get it from the following link:

http://bink.nu/news/archive/tags/Windows+Server+2008/default.aspx

I have installed Windows Server 2008 (64 bit) and used the tool, and installed the drivers for the Thinkpad T61, and I got all the features that I had with my original OS (Vista Business 32 bit) even the ‘Finger Print Login’ feature.  So to anyone thinking about doing it I suggest you go for it and good luck.

Nas

Speaking at the Pittsburgh Code Camp on April 12th on Configureing FBA with MOSS 2007

Let me start this off by gladly saying that I will be speaking at the Pittsburgh Code Camp on April 12th, I will be speaking on the same subject that I spoke on previously: Configuring Forms Based Authentication with MOSS 2007 (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007), this is only my second time speaking so I thought I would keep it simple by speaking on the same subject and maybe go into a bit more details if time allows me to do so. I apologize for not posting my notes and steps on configuring FBA as I have promised before, I have been a little too busy with work.

You can read more about the Pittsburgh Code Camp and register using this link: http://www.pghdotnet.org/CodeCamp/

Nas

Speaking on FBA at the Roanoke Code Camp on March 1st

Yep that’s right, I am speaking at Roanoke Code Camp. (Special thanks to Michael Lotter) who suggested the idea to me when we were heading up to the Philly code camp about a month ago, and helped me learn everything about FBA that I know now. I will be speaking about FBA (Forms Based Authentication) and configuring it with MOSS 2007.

I have been tagging along with Michael Lotter for the last few months to Code Camps all over the east coast, and after a few times and seeing how rewarding of an experience it is to listen to all these great speakers share their knowledge, I decided why not do it. I have done a few MOSS 2007 installations and FBA configurations and I think I know enough to stand up there and talk about it for an hour or so

I will post my slides, notes, and code samples here after the code camp, I encourage everybody to take a look and try it out and let me know what you think.

Thanks guys,

Nas

My First Blog, Deep in the World of SharePoint and FBA

Hi guys, this is my first blog posting and I am really excited to start sharing my experience with SharePoint and related technologies.  We all know how relaxing working with SharePoint can be

I am pretty new to SharePoint, but after a few months of working with it I kinda know how stressful it can be.  When I tell this to my co-workers who have been working with SharePoint for years now, they always give me that look that says (you haven’t seen anything yet).  But I do find working with SharePoint as a very rewarding experience especially with the fact that while working with SharePoint you will learn a lot about many other technologies that are tied in with SharePoint such as ASP.NET.  I will try my best to blog about my projects that I work on and my experiences with working and solving common problems with SharePoint and the related technologies to help all the SharePoint newcomers, and many others as much as possible.

I have been working with FBA (Forms Based Authentication)with the help of my colleague Michael Lotter for the last couple of months, and implementing my own custom membership provider and trying to tie it together to be used within SharePoint rather than as an external application, which I think would look and feel a lot more professional especially for clients.  I will be blogging about FBA and the ASP.NET Provider Model a lot more as I work with i, and I do encourage anybody who has any questions or comments regarding my blog to email me nali@bandrsolutions.com or post a comment.

Thanks guys,

Nas