System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironmentException: Failed to access IIS metabase

Ok IIS 6 throws this exception for the 1st time. Google search helped me to find a solution easily.  

The most probable cause for this error is that you must have installed Internet Information Services (IIS) after the installation of Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or later versions.

RESOLUTION

Follow the steps given below to fix this error
 
(1) Go to Start | Control Panel | Add and Remove Programs
 
(2) Click on the entry titled Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and select Change/Remove. The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Setup dialog box opens up.
 
(3) Select the option titled Repair and the setup automatically performs the required repair work.
 
(4) You will be prompted to reboot the system after the completion of the process.
 
(5) Run the affected ASP.NET 2.0 application once again and the application should work fine without any problems.

NOTE : If you have installed Visual Studio 2008 Beta or Visual Web Developer Express Beta or .Net Framework 3.5, you may need to repair the .Net Framework 3.5 (Even though you use ASP.Net 2.X in your IIS 6). You may also need to go to IIS control panel and re-select the ASP.Net version.

 

DotNetNuke and SalesForce

Ok I got my hands on with DNN (DotNetNuke) opensouce .net CMS (content management system) in last month. DNN is the best OpenSouce .Net CMS I have seen. I will blog about my DNN experience later. Just wanted to outline few things that I got to know today.

I was thinking, what if we can integrate DNN + SalesForce + ExactTarget.

Just think about the possibilities,

1. Custom web-to-lead page generation.
2. Web forms and surveys generation.
3. Run campaigns and use ExactTarget as the Email Provider.
4. Track all your campaing results inside SalesForce (Eg. Email opens, Link Clicks)
5. Reports and Dashboards (Graphical Representation of the campaign results and feed backs) 
6. Data replication in SalesForce (You can maximise your Sales Force Data Storage)

Etc etc …

You could do all that without having HTML or any web programming language skills.Well thats the idea, how to create a on-demand Software as a Service which can be integrated with SalesForce and use DNN.

There is this company called “Cubic Compass Software”, they already implemented something similar.Here is the link: http://www.wwwcoder.com/tabid/68/type/art/parentid/282/site/6429/default.aspx

This leads us (our company) for many opportunities.

I found this post in SalesForce is informative;

“ There are a few approaches to integrating a Portal’s membership management system with Salesforce.

1) Wrap your home site web pages in an IFRAME that references Salesforce hosted Self-Service pages.

2) Create custom fields on Lead/Contact records, such as “Portal Account Name”, that map to the portal membership module. Query in real-time or synchronize in batch.

3) Use the SelfServiceUser object directly from the portal using the Salesforce API.

4) Our approach was to use something similar to the ASP.NET 2.0 Profile Provider and synchronize it with Salesforce. “

Mike Leach

If you are intrested then you need to have look at their website and videos:
http://www.cubiccompass.com/download.aspx

Thats it for now. I am going to continue with my re-search work with DNN and SalesForce.