I ran into the following issue when testing code in a manage package. A test needed to get the Id's of the RecordTypes associated with different records in a custom object.

The sample code in SF is this:

List<RecordType> rtypes = [SELECT Name, id FROM RecordType WHERE sObjectType='Account' and isActive=true];

 of course this works because Accont is a native object. But the following code fails in a managed package

List<RecordType> rtypes = [SELECT Name, id FROM RecordType WHERE sObjectType='MyObject__c' and isActive=true];
 Map<String, String> accRecTypes = new Map<String, String>();
   for(RecordType rt: rtypes){
      accRecTypes.put(rt.name, rt.id);
   }

This fails because the custom object is appended with the Namespace so the sObjectType value should be MyNameSpace__MyObject__c. This is pain if you're moving from Dev, to Staging Orgs, Beta etc as you need to change the query each time. The solution is simple - leave out the sObjectType param in the Where clause and then get the types you want. The number of RecordTypes is generally small so its not a big deal.

List<RecordType> rtypes = [SELECT Name, id FROM RecordType WHERE isActive=true];

//now get the types you want
string MyType1Id = accRecTypes.get('My Record Type 1');
string MyType2Id = accRecTypes.get('My Record Type 2');