Monday, October 27, 2008

Gallery Server Pro Version 2.1.3222 Released

This is a minor bug fix release. It contains three bug fixes:

  • (SQL Server only) Error when installing to a SQL Server database that uses a case-sensitive collation
  • Wrong resource name used in edit album popup window (only affects non-English translations)
  • Hidden files are added to the gallery during a synchronization. The synchronization code now inspects the hidden file attribute and ignores all hidden files.

Thanks to forum member KiloMike for helping identify the collation issue. This affects only SQL Server users. I had C# code and SQL in stored procedures that referred to column names that differed only by case, such as AlbumId and AlbumID. That works fine when you are using a case-insensitive collation, which is the default, at least on every installation I have ever done. But this fails in case-sensitive collations, such as SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS. As I researched this bug, I also found an issue with the database configuration SQL script. I had originally used Visual Studio Database Edition to produce the SQL that configures the database, and it specifies the SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS collation. That has always bothered me, because it just didn't seem right to hard code something so culture-specific. Today I discovered that I could replace these references with "COLLATE database_default", causing it to inherit the collation of the database.

Some of you will have no idea what I am talking about. No worries. The end result is that GSP will now install in more situations and you have the option of enforcing case sensitivity if you want. So, a gallery search for 'Summer Vacation' is different than 'summer vacation'. Again, I am still talking about SQL Server only. SQLite ignores case, and I am not aware of a way to change this (but I admit I haven't looked into it, either).

Finally, there is a change in how GSP synchronizes files. Starting with this release, if it encounters a file with the 'hidden' file attribute, it now ignores it. That will help with Apple OS-X users. Thanks to Ralf from Germany for this suggestion.

Instructions for upgrading are - as always - in the Administrator's Guide.

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