Technical Weblog of Eric Charran : SQL Server

Expression Examples in Reporting Services

echarran — Thu, 31 May 2007 22:54:56 GMT

While this topic is in Books Online for SQL Server 2005, I found it really handy as a quick reference for writing elementary and advanced Reporting Services expressions.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms157328.aspx

Dynamic Flat File Connection Manager Connections

echarran — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 23:27:17 GMT

I'm writing an SSIS package to iterate over the MOSS logs directory to import the logs into a SQL Server table (eventually a data mart) where I can write queries to pull out the information I need. What I plan to do is loop over the logs directory structure using a ForEach container and then import the logs. The challenge is that while I can get the file reference to the log into a variable, I need to change the Flat File Connection Manager to point to that folder. This screenshot says it tall.

This is under the Flat File Connection Manager's expression Property.

MOSS 2007 and SQL Server 2005 Maintenance Plans

echarran — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:43:14 GMT

For my future reference (and yours as well), here is how to configure your SQL Server 2005 maintenance plans so that they operate correctly with MOSS. A great post by Jingmei Li.

http://blogs.msdn.com/jingmeili/archive/2007/02/26/sql-server-2005-maintenance-plans-and-moss-2007-databases.aspx

Clustered Index Rebuilds Affecting Non-Clustered Indexes

echarran — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:44:45 GMT

Another nifty note about indexing. One of the more popular interview questions for technical folks is the various effects a change to a clustered index can have on nonclustered indexes. This post clears some of that up:

Does rebuilding a clustered index rebuild nonclustered indexes

The answer may surprise you. Essentially, altering a clustered index does not affect the nonclustered indexes. Dropping and recreating do.

Create a Time Dimension in SQL Server

echarran — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 00:15:21 GMT

Here is a great link on how to create a time dimension for a relational data warehouse in SQL Server. It's great that I won't have to worry about this again!

http://sqljunkies.com/WebLog/enigma/archive/2004/02/04/940.aspx

SQL Server Feature Pack and SP2

echarran — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 16:24:45 GMT

The following URL goes to the SQL Server Feature Pack which consists of a listing of SQL Server 2005 redistributable components and add-ons for SQL Server. If you have a server that only needs ADOMD.NET for example, or Notification Servers Client Components, this link provides resources to download them separately.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=50B97994-8453-4998-8226-FA42EC403D17&displaylang=en#filelist

And Here is the SP2 Link

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=d07219b2-1e23-49c8-8f0c-63fa18f26d3a&DisplayLang=en#filelist

SQL Server Reporting Services Add-in For WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007

echarran — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:41:23 GMT

Here is the link for the MOSS 2007/WSS 3.0 add-in for SQL Server Reporting Services.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=4E50BE6E-3F92-4552-A78C-B3BE1D94D5DA&displaylang=en

Load Testing SQL Server Reporting Services using Visual Studio 2005

echarran — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 23:23:42 GMT

Here is a great article on how to leverage the unit testing engine built into Visual Studio to test SQL Server Reporting Services.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/VS05PLTSQL.asp

SQL Server 2005 Feature Pack and Downloads

echarran — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 13:35:00 GMT

The feature pack is a set of separate downloads that allow you to install components of SQL Server without installing the whole server product. Available at the following URL:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=D09C1D60-A13C-4479-9B91-9E8B9D835CDC&displaylang=en

Also, SQL Server Service Pack 1 just RTM'd:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cb6c71ea-d649-47ff-9176-e7cac58fd4bc&DisplayLang=en

Connection Pooling Scope and Behavior

echarran — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 18:50:00 GMT

I recently ran into a question regarding the scope of connection pools that .NET creates when applications require a database connection. The following feedback and link was provided by a colleague of mine in response to the question:

As per the folloiwng article:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8xx3tyca.aspx

Connection pools are created per process, app domain and connection string. Additionally, per useer when using Integrated Security.

Thanks Joe!

Federated Database Design

echarran — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 10:15:00 GMT

Federated database design relates to carrying service oriented architecture into the database layer. Because SQL Server 2005 has several application server-like capabilities (i.e., SQL Server Integration Services, SQL Server Service Broker, Web Services and the SQL Server CLR), these capabilities promote the consideration of a loosely-coupled archtecture that carries all the way to the database layer. The idea here is to consider moving away from a monolitic database design where a single database has hunderds of tables in a robust application, to a paradigm where there are multiple, modulare databases that are exposed through a services abstraction layer (i.e., web services) to a consuming application. Couple this with an asynchronous communication scheme, and you have an application which is not dependent on the immediate availability of its parts. Each part/service transmits messages to its counterparts. If the counterpart is present, it consumes the message. If not, the message is stored and sent when the service becomes available. This now means that there is new flexibility with regard to patching, maintaining and upgrading applicaiton componenets.

When to use SQL Server Service Broker

echarran — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 23:51:00 GMT

Use SQL Server Service Broker for asynchronous transactional messaging from applications where transactional throughput and scalability is required, as well as rehydratable and failure resistant transactional consistency is required. The example would be that an ASP.NET web application should be able to accept web orders and send the orders to service broker. If the SQL Server goes down, the ASP.NET application should be able to continue to take and queue orders and submit them to the SQL Server when it becomes available. This also increases throughput and scalability because SQL Server will process the messages when it gets to them. Also, SQL Server, after a failure will come back up and continue to process the orders. When users visit the site, the ASP.NET application can then read the response to messages and give users the status of their orders.

SQL Server 2005 WMI Provider Error

echarran — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 06:23:00 GMT

I recently resolved an error with the SQL Server 2005 Configuration Manager. Occasionally, during setup, some .mof files don't get installed and registered correctly. There is a program called mofcomp that is responsible for registering and storing the data associated with .mof files. If the .mof file information becomes damaged or compromised, or never installed correctly, the problem will result in an error message like below:

Cannot connect to WMI provider. You do not have permission or the server is unreachable. Note that you can only manage SQL Server 2005 servers with SQL Server Configuration Manager.
Invalid class [0x80041010]

The solution is to go to a command prompt and then run mofcomp.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared>mofcomp "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\sqlmgmproviderxpsp2up.mof"

The output will look like below

Microsoft (R) 32-bit MOF Compiler Version 5.1.2600.2180
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corp. 1997-2001. All rights reserved.
Parsing MOF file: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\sqlmgmprovider
xpsp2up.mof
MOF file has been successfully parsed
Storing data in the repository...
Done!

On servers, the .mof file will be sqlmgmprovider.mof.

Visual Studio and SQL Server 2005 Beta and CTP Uninstall Tool

echarran — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 18:06:00 GMT

Of course, by now everyone is running Visual Studio 2005, riiight? [8-|]

For those folks that are just beginning to install, check out this tool that will clean your machine of previous versions of pre-released Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support/uninstall/#Tool

SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Parameter Gotcha

echarran — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 16:18:00 GMT

Here is a situation I recently ran across. We created a report which executed a stored procedure. The parameters being passed had default values, so that when they were not qualified, they would default to pre-assigned values. Thus, when these "optional" parameters showed in the Data Set tab, and we executed the procedure after setting them to NULL, we encountered the error below.

Reporting Services uses ADO.NET to retrieve data from data sources. This is a straight ADO.NET error. The problem here is that the specification of NULL for a parameter, does not exclude the parameter, but causes the Stored Procedure to ignore the default. This NULL specification just happened to blow up our stored procedure. The stored procedure did not raise an error, but the result set was empty. Thus, when we changed the stored procedure to explicity check for a NULL, everything worked.