a day in programming

There was a utility on our intranet that used to convert word and excel documents to pdf. Click here to upload ....zzzz...5 seconds later. Click here to download PDF version. Simplicity itself

Then we upgraded the Intranet server from W2000 Server Enterprise to W2003 Server Professional. Seems just like names huh? There are differences (especially with IDEs). We transferred all the asp to the new server and everything works fine except the pdf converter. Now you cannot begin to imagine the misery this innocuous little thing has brought me.

Mail flies in and out in caps.
We have a very important document that should not be seen by anyone else (reluctance to send the document to helpdesk)
developers are just lazy...
What can be so hard about copying an application from one computer to another?

My boss asks me why the application is not running. To put it very simply Microsoft have become very sly and have disabled server side Office Automation (in 2003). This means that if you open a document object in code and try to do something with it, the runtime will detect that the document is
i) not visible
ii) running in a server context;
and proceed to present your code with a dialog box, for instance "Are you sure you want to open this document" or "this document is read only". Once presented with this, your app is dead in the water because there is no way to simulate a click in code.

So you imagine that some bright chap might have written a dll that can be ported? You actually find such a dll but the OS needs a certificate authority or some sort of Public Key/Private key code signing (Corporate Information Security? Yeah. Bunch of busybodies whose work is to make other peoples' work harder). The dll is launched but then it hangs in memory, does not finish its task, it does not quit and it does not raise any error. At this point, you are just seeing red. You search event logs record by record. Nothing.

After endless Googling, you find some deeply burried MSFT bulletin that vaguely tries to explain it to you why you cannot do certain things in certain contexts. Try explaining that to Mr Jonathan of Accounting.

Shortcuts now. You find an old, disused PC running Windows 2000, install IIS and redirect the users there...and hope the security idlers will not find out you are simulating servers on PCs.

In software, newer is almost always never better. Avoid the monstrosities that are coming out.