wsfinder - FrontPage - Api's galore

http://www.wsfinder.com/main

Mark Bower : Searching SPS using MSN Desktop Search

Mark Bower : Searching SPS using MSN Desktop Search

Creating a PDF from a Stored Procedure

Creating a PDF from a Stored Procedure

Books by Microsoft MVPs

http://www.microsoftbookstore.com/BooksByMVPs.aspx

MSSQL Server Reporting Services: Mastering OLAP Reporting: Extending Conditional Formatting: SWITCH and Drilldown Defaults

MSSQL Server Reporting Services: Mastering OLAP Reporting: Extending Conditional Formatting: SWITCH and Drilldown Defaults

Bait & SWITCH()

MSSQL Server Reporting Services : Black Belt Components: Manage Nulls in OLAP Reports

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3436441

This article is a member of the series MSSQL Server 2000 Reporting Services. The series is designed to introduce MSSQL Server 2000 Reporting Services ("Reporting Services"), with the objective of presenting an overview of its features, together with many tips and techniques for real-world use. For more information on the series, as well as the hardware / software requirements to prepare for the exercises we will undertake, please see my initial Database Journal article, A New Paradigm for Enterprise Reporting.

Basic assumptions underlying the series are that...

Sample asp page for OLAP

<% set rsProject = nothing

set comPS = nothing

set prmPS = nothing

set conPS = nothing %>

Certification Stuff - MCSD, MCAD, MCDBA, OCP

Certification Stuff - MCSD, MCAD, MCDBA, OCP

Heath Stewart's Blog : Compact Your VHD Files

Heath Stewart's Blog : Compact Your VHD Files

The Code Project - SqlWhereBuilder ASP.NET Server Control - ASP.NET

The Code Project - SqlWhereBuilder ASP.NET Server Control - ASP.NET

Mark Harrison: Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Server 2005 beta

Mark Harrison: Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Server 2005 beta

C# .NET Tools and Utilities

C# .NET Tools and Utilities

Visual C# Developer Center : C# Programming Tools

Visual C# Developer Center : C# Programming Tools

SharpToolbox - .NET tools, libraries and add-ins - DotNet tools

SharpToolbox - .NET tools, libraries and add-ins - DotNet tools

.NET Toolbox

.NET Toolbox

Open Source Software in C#

Open Source Software in C#

Case Study: Hudson's Bay Company

Case Study: Hudson's Bay Company

entityspaces.tigris.org

entityspaces.tigris.org The future of dOOdads.

74 Financial Excel Templates

74 Financial Excel Templates

Mark Harrison: Documentation for Business Scorecard Manager 2005

Mark Harrison: Documentation for Business Scorecard Manager 2005

ASP.NET: Remote Scripting,Yes. AJAX, "NOT"

ASP.NET: Remote Scripting,Yes. AJAX, "NOT" Zip code database & lookup with ajax.

Content with Style: Fixing the Back Button and Enabling Bookmarking for AJAX Apps

Content with Style: Fixing the Back Button and Enabling Bookmarking for AJAX Apps

OpenLaszlo

OpenLaszlo
OpenRico

Two nice open-source frameworks for enhancing web UIs...

Code of the Day

Code of the Day - How to setup .NET 2.0

Hot Points � A blog by Go Daddy founder and president Bob Parsons

Hot Points � A blog by Go Daddy founder and president Bob Parsons

MS Visio Coolness

MS Visio Coolness How to fix dangling orphan relationships

Renaming Report Server

Renaming Report Server

Web Q&A: ASP.NET Performance, Notification, Keeping Sort Order, and More -- MSDN Magazine, May 2005

Web Q&A: ASP.NET Performance, Notification, Keeping Sort Order, and More -- MSDN Magazine, May 2005

Great information about authentication for OLAP via web site, and other q/a items.

MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search Developer Guide

MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search Developer Guide

More ASpnet articles

ASPNET Articles

Yummy! Personal PDF Library

Yummy! Personal PDF Library

script.aculo.us - web 2.0 javascript

script.aculo.us - web 2.0 javascript I'll have to try implementing some more of this stuff... drag & drop, Ajax, etc...

MSSQL Server Reporting Services: Mastering OLAP Reporting: Percent of Total - Two Perspectives

MSSQL Server Reporting Services: Mastering OLAP Reporting: Percent of Total - Two Perspectives

s t e n c i l r y . -- it's cooler than you.

s t e n c i l r y . -- it's cooler than you.

T E X T F I L E S

T E X T F I L E S

How to create a sample application that uses the Reporting Services SOAP APIs to render a report to a selected file format on a Web page

How to create a sample application that uses the Reporting Services SOAP APIs to render a report to a selected file format on a Web page

Direct Reports :

Direct Reports : Static Report Headers in Matrix Reports, various articles.

Service Pack 2 is out

Service Pack 2 is out. Be sure to do the obscure 'backup your encryption keys' procedure, or else!

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=502C0D89-1308-4662-8F58-CEC55EF1235B&displaylang=en

cool stuff - stored proc resultset queries

This command allows you to link to the local SQL Server & select individual columns from a stored procedure

sp_addlinkedserver @server = 'LOCALSERVER', @srvproduct = '', @provider = 'SQLOLEDB', @datasrc = @@servername
GO

select * from openquery(localserver,'exec mystoredproc')
GO

Great for comparing the results of 2 stored procedures, or doing union queries against multiple stored procedures without temp tables.

http://www.sommarskog.se/share_data.html

RDL Generator

This is a $49 managed code component to interact with RDL files.

http://www.rdlcomponents.com/

Reporting Services Scripter

This tool seems great for creating batch scripts against SQL RS.

http://www.sqldbatips.com/samples/code/RSScripter/readme.htm#_installing_rss

Reporting Services companies

One of the things the company I work for specializes in is Reporting Services deployments.

Here's a list of some companies with add-ons for RS.

Cizer
Capricorn Software, LTD
Central Information Systems
Groeneveld Management Services BV
The Henson Group
JM Consulting
Microsoft
Northwest Training Systems, Inc.">
NxTrend
ReportsTrader.com
Tridec
ZAPTECH
Other

Good article around MS C# Coding Standards

http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/articles/361363.aspx

Changing the Process Buffer Size to Improve OLAP Cube Processing

http://solidqualitylearning.com/blogs/Dejan/archive/2004/10/15/194.aspxChanging the Process Buffer Size to Improve OLAP Cube Processing
Last few days I played with the Process Buffer size (in Analysis Manager, check the server properties, Processing Tab). This option, besides many other performance tips, is described in excellent article Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services Performance Guide by Carl Rabeler, Len Wyatt and Dave Wickert. After few tests, I got the best performance when I changed the default value of 32 MB to 256 MB. I was really surprised by the processing time improvement. Amazingly, the processing time (full process) for a quite large cube went down from 3 hours 58 minutes to 1 hour 14 minutes! Really amazing – processing is now more than three times faster by just adjusting a single option. After this experience, I would suggest to everyone who is using OLAP cubes in production to start testing the process buffer size, especially if you are close to the limit of the time window available for processing. The best actual size might vary depending on your HW and cubes, but you sure want to increase the default value.

Profiling .NET Apps

http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/darrell.norton/archive/2004/12/22/38226.aspx

Interesting .net profiler for performance tuning.

Sample Script for Setting Item-level Security in Reporting Services

http://blogs.msdn.com/bryanke/archive/2004/03/17/91736.aspx
Report Manager is a solid, Web-based administrative tool for Reporting Services, but it is not the end-all-be-all of administrative functionality for a report server. There are many capabilities available through the Web service that Report Manager does not take advantage of. Case in point: Setting a security policy (otherwise known as a role assignment) for an item using Report Manager is a bit cumbersome, especially if the item for which you want to add a policy is nested several folders deep in your report server namespace. Let's take an example. Let's say you have a folder at “/Budgets/Finance” and you would like to give Bob permission to view reports in the Finance folder. You add a new role assignment for Bob and make him a Browser user of the Finance folder. Bob logs into Report Manager hoping to navigate to the Finance folder, but...Bob is not able to see any folders when he logs in. What gives? Well, unfortunately the path to Bob's Finance folder actually contains three items: The Home or root folder (”/”), the Budgets folder and the Finance folder. Because Bob is not allowed to view the root folder or the Budgets folder, he will never see the Finance folder for which he has permissions. Sorry Bob. In order to give Bob Browser permissions on the Finance folder, you must add Bob as a Browser of both the Home and Budgets folders. If you need to add more groups or users to the Finance folder, it can get downright tiresome. Oh, did I mention that every time you add a policy for Bob to one of the folders, the inherited policy is broken. Yes, that means that any users that enjoyed inherited permissions to those items (for example BUILTIN\Administrators or some other administrator group) no longer have any access rights. You will have to re-add inherited permissions as local policies on each of the three folders in our example. Yikes. Fortunately for Bob, Reporting Services offers rs.exe, a scripting utility with complete access to the Reporting Services Web service. You can use this scripting tool to automate certain tasks and to perform administrative functions that may not be easily automated through Report Manager.
The following sample script can be used to add a security policy for a nested folder or report which automatically gives the user permissions up the namespace tree. After using this script, the item is immediately accessible to the user. In addition, you can use this script to keep or delete the current set of policies for the item, including inherited ones. I haven't given the script the whole battery of tests yet, so if you play around with the code, try it on your test server only. If you find any problems or issues, let me know.

'=====================================================================
' File: AddItemSecurity.rss
'
' Summary: Demonstrates a script that can be used with RS.exe to
' set security on an item in Reporting Services.
'
'---------------------------------------------------------------------
' THIS CODE AND INFORMATION ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY
' KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE
' IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND/OR FITNESS FOR A
' PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
'=====================================================================*/
'
' Variables that are passed on the command line with the -v switch:
' userName - the name of the user for which to add a policy
' roleName - the name of the role to apply for the user (i.e. Browser, Content Manager)
' itemPath - the path of the item for which you want to add the policy (i.e. /SampleReports)
' keepCurrentPolicy - whether to keep the current policy and add the new one
'
' Sample command line:
' rs -i AddItemSecurity.rss -s http://localhost/reportserver -v userName="MyTestUser"
' -v roleName="Browser" -v itemPath="/SampleReports" -v keepCurrentPolicy="True"

Public Sub Main()
Dim isRoot As Boolean = False
Dim inheritParent As Boolean
Dim policies() As Policy
Dim newPolicies() As Policy
Dim policy As New Policy()
Dim roles(0) As Role
roles(0) = New Role()
roles(0).Name = roleName
policy.Roles = roles
policy.GroupUserName = userName

While Not isRoot
' Once the root of the catalog is reached,
' stop applying policies
If itemPath = "/" Then
isRoot = True
End If
policies = rs.GetPolicies(itemPath, inheritParent)

' If the user selects not to keep inherited or current policy,
' empty the policy
If Not keepCurrentPolicy = "True" Then
policies = Nothing
End If
newPolicies = AddNewPolicy(policy, policies)
rs.SetPolicies(itemPath, newPolicies)
itemPath = GetParentPath(itemPath)
End While
Console.WriteLine("Policy successfully set.")
End Sub 'Main


' Method to parse the path of an item and retrieve
' the parent path of an item
Private Function GetParentPath(currentPath As String) As String
Dim delimiter As String = "/"
Dim rx As New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex(delimiter)
Dim childPath As String() = rx.Split(currentPath)

Dim parentLength As Integer = childPath.Length - 1
Dim parentPath(parentLength) As String

Dim i As Integer
For i = 0 To parentLength - 1
parentPath(i) = childPath(i)
Next i
If parentPath.Length = 1 Then
Return "/"
Else
Return String.Join("/", parentPath)
End If
End Function 'GetParentPath

' Takes the policy to add and applies it to the current set
' of policies if applicable
Private Function AddNewPolicy(policyToAdd As Policy, policies() As Policy) As Policy()
If Not (policies Is Nothing) Then
Dim policy As Policy
For Each policy In policies
If policy.GroupUserName = policyToAdd.GroupUserName Then
Throw New Exception("The supplied User policy already exists for the item.")
End If
Next policy
Dim list As New System.Collections.ArrayList(policies)
list.Add(policyToAdd)
Return CType(list.ToArray(GetType(Policy)), Policy())
Else
policies = New Policy(0) {}
policies(0) = policyToAdd
Return policies
End If
End Function 'AddNewPolicy
posted on Wednesday, March 17, 2004 11:26 PM
-->

Command Line SQL RS

This may be useful...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/rsprog/htm/rsp_prog_soapapi_dev_2g2q.asp

1. Create a command script to run the .rss Reporting Services script.
rs.exe -i c:\sqlrs.rss -s http://servername/reportserver/

2. Create the rss script.

Public Sub Main()

' Render arguments
Dim result As Byte() = Nothing
Dim reportPath As String = "/ReportPath/"
Dim format As String = "Excel"
Dim historyID As String = Nothing
Dim devInfo As String = "0.125inFalse"

' Prepare report parameter.
Dim parameters(0) As ParameterValue
parameters(0) = New ParameterValue()
parameters(0).Name = "Param1Name"
parameters(0).Value = "Param1Value"

Dim credentials As DataSourceCredentials() = Nothing
Dim showHideToggle As String = Nothing
Dim encoding As String
Dim mimeType As String
Dim warnings As Warning() = Nothing
Dim reportHistoryParameters As ParameterValue() = Nothing
Dim streamIDs As String() = Nothing
Dim sh As New SessionHeader()
rs.SessionHeaderValue = sh

Try
result = rs.Render(reportPath, format, historyID, devInfo, parameters, _
credentials, showHideToggle, encoding, mimeType, reportHistoryParameters, warnings, streamIDs)
sh.SessionId = rs.SessionHeaderValue.SessionId
Console.WriteLine("SessionID after call to Render: {0}", rs.SessionHeaderValue.SessionId)
Console.WriteLine("Execution date and time: {0}", rs.SessionHeaderValue.ExecutionDateTime)
Console.WriteLine("Is new execution: {0}", rs.SessionHeaderValue.IsNewExecution)
Catch e As SoapException
Console.WriteLine(e.Detail.OuterXml)
End Try
' Write the contents of the report to an MHTML file.
Try
Dim stream As FileStream = File.Create("report.xls", result.Length)
Console.WriteLine("File created.")
stream.Write(result, 0, result.Length)
Console.WriteLine("Result written to the file.")
stream.Close()
Catch e As Exception
Console.WriteLine(e.Message)
End Try


' Dim items() As CatalogItem
' items = rs.ListChildren("/", True)

' Dim item As CatalogItem
' For Each item In items
' Console.WriteLine(item.Name)
' Next item
End Sub

Converting Crystal to SQL RS

The holy grail of reporting tools?

http://www.rdlcomponents.com/

http://support.businessobjects.com/library/kbase/articles/c2008882.asp

SQL Performance Articles

I'm doing a review of performance on a SQL Cluster for a client and it makes sense to recap some of the performance items to check here in the next few entries.

SQL Server 2000 Performance - Level 200
Updated: August 1, 2001
This session takes an in-depth look at SQL Server 2000 Performance. We will cover a wide range of topics starting with the lock manager were will look at the types of locks, the locking architecture and how to obtain information on locking. Next we will cover the query processor and how the optimiser works and how the caching is used. We will then look at how to tune queries, when to start thinking about tuning and then look at the tool to monitor query performance. Finally we will round off by looking at the tuning SQL Server itself, we will see how to update SQL Server parameters and using the performance tools to tune these parameters.
SQL Server™ 2000 Performance - Preview
SQL Server™ 2000 Performance
SQL Server™ 2000 Performance - Viewing SQL Server Locks: Demo 1
SQL Server™ 2000 Performance - Query Analyzer: Demo 2
SQL Server™ 2000 Performance - Load Simulator: Demo 3
SQL Server™ 2000 Performance - Index Tuning Wizard: Demo 4
SQL Server™ 2000 Performance - SQL System Configuration Enterprise Manager: Demo 5
SQL Server™ 2000 Performance - SQL Profiler: Demo 6
SQL Server™ 2000 Performance - System Diagnostic Procedures: Demo 7
SQL Server™ 2000 Performance - System Monitor: Demo 8
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Dependent Parameters

Using multiple parameters in reports.