I’ve been installing and uninstalling multiple things before finally settling on my ultimate recipe for installing the correct Ruby version and Gems:
(Within Terminal and already running the latest version of macports )

sudo port install ruby19 +nosuffix
sudo port install sqlite3
sudo gem update --system
sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby
sudo gem install rails

1. In a local situation you are stuck with a directory on your system which doesn’t contain anything sensible: your local repository
2. It is not easy to convert a local directory to a working copy under version control (add/commit/checkout)

Now I’ve switched to Git and I will undoubtly find issues using it, but so far my two main frustrations are solved with three lines of code

git init
git add .
git commit -m "First commit"

I used to blog on tech-stuff I ran into in my job, I don’t think that will come back. We’ll see where this is going.

I had the Response Schema defined somewhere around the lines of this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<xs:schema xmlns="http://BizTalk_Webservice_Publishing_issue.Schema2"
  xmlns:b="http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003"
  targetNamespace="http://BizTalk_Webservice_Publishing_issue.Schema2"
  xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <xs:element name="Root">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:sequence>
        <xs:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded" name="Record">
          <xs:complexType>
            <xs:sequence>
              <xs:element name="Field1" type="xs:string" />
              <xs:element name="Field2" type="xs:string" />
              <xs:element name="Field3" type="xs:string" />
            </xs:sequence>
          </xs:complexType>
        </xs:element>
      </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>
</xs:schema>

Looks sensible right? It compiles okay, I can make an Orchestration with a Request-Response port, everything looks fine, until the Web Service Publishing Wizard gives me:

Failed to create project http://localhost/BizTalk_Webservice_Publishing_issue_Proxy.
[Microsoft.BizTalk.WebServices.PublishingException] Failed to construct code for schema "http://BizTalk_Webservice_Publishing_issue.Schema2".
Method not found: System.String System.Xml.Serialization.XmlMapping.get_ElementName().

I didn’t get it, what was wrong? After searching the internet (in which I obviously found one of Patrick’s blogpost which didn’t help in this case as I had no imported schema’s) I began some experiments. I determined that the cause lies in the multiplicity on the Record element. It didn’t matter what values I used, as soon as the schema allowed more than one Record element to be a part of the message, the Wizard failed on me.

I don’t remember how I got the idea, but the solution is rather simple. It appears that the Wizard doesn’t like the multiplicity on the element. So, let’s put the multiplicity one level higher, around the element, like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<xs:schema xmlns="http://BizTalk_Webservice_Publishing_issue.Schema2"
  xmlns:b="http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003"
  targetNamespace="http://BizTalk_Webservice_Publishing_issue.Schema2"
  xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <xs:element name="Root">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:sequence>
        <xs:sequence minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded">
          <xs:element name="Record">
            <xs:complexType>
              <xs:sequence>
                <xs:element name="Field1" type="xs:string" />
                <xs:element name="Field2" type="xs:string" />
                <xs:element name="Field3" type="xs:string" />
              </xs:sequence>
            </xs:complexType>
          </xs:element>
        </xs:sequence>
      </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>
</xs:schema>

So after encapsulating the Record element in a Sequence on which I added the multiplicity, all was well. I don’t think I fully understand why the Wizard (or XSD.exe which is running the show in the background) fails on the first version, but now I do know how to solve this.

Update: fixed the formatting of the XML Schema’s for readability.

This one has helped me more than once, kudo’s to Min Kwan Park.

It appears that the feeds have a limit for the number of items they can contain, this limit is by default set at 200. That’s not enough for me. You can set the limit by modifying the feed properties, but that would mean I needed to right-click al the feeds (100+) so I needed another way to modify all the feeds. Of course the Windows RSS Platform has an API, so some programming will come to the rescue. I originally thought that this would be an excellent opportunity to delve into Powershell, but it appears that Powershell is not yet available for Vista at this moment

So some JavaScript to the rescue. Run it using cscript, and all feeds will be modified.

  var feedsManager, rootFolder;
  feedsManager = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.FeedsManager");
  rootFolder = feedsManager.RootFolder;
  iterateFolders(rootFolder);

  function iterateFolders(folder)
  {
    if (null == folder) return;
    var currentFolder;
    var e = new Enumerator(folder.Subfolders);
    for(;!e.atEnd();e.moveNext())
    {
      currentFolder = e.item();
      iterateFolders(currentFolder);
    }
    iterateFeeds(folder);
  }

  function iterateFeeds(feedFolder)
  {
    if (null == feedFolder) return;
    var feed;
    var e = new Enumerator(feedFolder.Feeds);
    for(;!e.atEnd();e.moveNext())
    {
      feed=e.item();
      //feed.MaxItemCount = feedsManager.ItemCountLimit;
      feed.MaxItemCount = 0;
      WScript.Echo(feed.Name + ": " + feed.MaxItemCount);
    }
  }

Update: I previously set the MaxItemcount to the ItemCountLimit (2500), set it to 0 to set it to unlimited