Posts

I don’t know a lot about Collation – I know how to set it in SQL Server, I know it’s important, it know chaos can ensure if your not careful for example if you set it to CS rather then CI*, so my general tack is to leave it as default and hope it leaves me alone. Today however, this happened Turns out in the VS SSDT package, I have forgotten to set one of the databases collation in project settings to Latin1_General_CI_AS to match the default on SQL Server (rather then the VS SSDT default)...

My current thoughts on SQL2016/PowerBI as deploying SQL2014. Ok, so we’re looking at moving to pure SQL 2014 for our corporate BI solution. I say pure as we normally use SQL server as the backend then other tools on top, so we’re looking at enabling a lot of extra features we’ve technically had for years but just not enabled\setup\whatever. SQL2016 is on the way and we’re most likely going to upgrade pretty quick, lots of new features that look very useful....

Todays problem was brought to you by a highly customizable system with poor user validation and a user who doesn’t know the difference between data and formatting. First the system. The supplier has created a highly user customizable system, they can for example create a web form with zero coding – 100% user config. The problem is, technically, it creates a mess. So your nice new form with a number of questions stores all its answers in a single table with the data going into a nvarchar(max) column – which is fine for free-text columns, but not so good for integer fields....

On Friday, I had a problem raised, they want to change one of the automatic rename jobs which renames and moves export files to a shared drive. Lucky, I had created a SSIS package, which was a SQL Job that runs on a scheduled every 15 mins, which uses a script task to perform the logic. Because we also used OctopusDeploy, this really was going to be a 5 min change....

For a while now I’ve been going to the Cambridgeshire SQL Server User Group, which I have found really useful especially as we are at moving towards a more self-service model across IT which requires IT to be a bit more cleverer. Beyond the informative speaker talks you get a really good networking opportunity. The group is run by Mark Broadbent (@retracement) and has recently merged with SharePoint Saturday Cambridge. Although Cambridge is about the same time on the train as London....

I’ve spent a while today trying to change the text direction (orientation) of a header on a SSRS report – the option was rather oddly placed in Visual Studio – the option is within the properties (for the text) Localization > Writing Mode > then change from Default to either Rotate270 or Vertical. I was hoping it would be within the Font options. Guess that would be too easy 😉

Todays problem, missing the reporting data toolbox in Visual Studio 2013 – once again, a different menu options. Open the actual report (.rdl) View > Report Data Alternatively press Ctrl + Alt + D

Stupidly today, I accidently closed the SSIS toolbox. After a bit of unsuccessful searching in the Visual Studio menus, I gave up and done the IT norm and Google it – hoping I wouldn’t have to reinstall. Luckily I found James Serra had already blogged about it, the only difference is Microsoft has changed the icon, its still in the same place at least So when is a Visual Studio Toolbox, not a Toolbox?...

One really annoying bug in SSIS when using Visual Studio 2013 / SQL Server 2014 is the object jumping, so when you drag an object like a sequence container down the object shoots to the bottom. Thankfully the fix is simple. Close Visual Studio and apply SQL Server 2014 SP1 to your machine.

One of the problems we have is documentation and how to keep it up-to-date. We tend to deliver a new batch of reports as part of a CR (Change Request) then make changes as part of BAU (Business as usual) unless its a particularly complex or time consuming change. The problem is often BAU changes happen rapidly often within a short time frame and time isn’t always allocated to updating documentation....

So I’ve been following a few folks on Twitter – one of them is Tim Mitchell from the US, he tweeted a link to some resources he used in a recent SQL Saturday he presented at. One of them is Konesans.com. Who happen to be based in Holbeach, which is really close to my home town of Wisbech. You go all over the world in search of knowledge, only to find there’s a guru right on your own doorstep....

I had a rather odd error with OctopusDeploy where the RavenDB backups were failing. Turns out the problem was because I had assigned 1 IPv4 address to OctopusDeploy and another IPv4 address for TeamCity. Oddly the RavenDB backup routine referenced the localhost address – 127.0.0.1, it appeared to be hardcode with no option other then changing port. This was especially weird as the OctopusDeploy service, was able to access it fine....

It appears IBM has moved the Cognos backup folder location from: C:\Program Files\ibm\cognos\c10_64\bkp To: C:\Program Files\ibm\cognos\c10_64\uninstall

Our new HR system uses SAP Business Objects for transactional reporting, as this was setup by our HR supplier we haven’t really got involved with it beyond writing a few custom reports, turns out we’ve written quite a few, so much so that the Business Objects CMS database has swollen to over 30 GBs. This, as you might have guessed, is causing a few performance problems. After a discussion with the supplier, we found out it was storing all the reports, even the ad-hoc one-off reports and we should have set a parameter to limit it....

Two new Azure features have caught my eye – the first is Logic App. In a nutshell this is workflow. You have connectors and you can add triggers and actions. So you could have a trigger on your HR system that when a new employee starts, it creates a user account then sends a welcome message to the existing staff informing them of the new starters. The other is Data Catalog, this basically allows you to generate meta data about your data sources....

I made the above video using Microsoft Excel using data from a FOI request to Ipswich Borough Council about the number of Parking fines issued since 2010.

Just an update to my previous post about the Toshiba Laptop, I’ve been thinking about reinstalling the Toshiba laptop with Ubuntu, but before I do that, I want a backup. Luckily, I still have the original 500GB hdd spare, I just need a USB caddy. Luckily my local Curry’s had a USB3.0 one (PNY SSD and 2.5″ Hard Drive Enclosure and Upgrade Kit), before anyone comments about how I could of got one cheaper off eBay, just remember, I was able to get it same day and it included Acronis....

I was talking to a colleague about one of our suppliers and the progress they were making on a new product they were developing. He was surprised to hear how little progress they appear to have made, they had previously been making huge steps in very little time with very few developers, especially surprising when they have been scaling up the development team over the past few months. I explained they are burning some of the technical debt they have collected whilst they still can....

UPDATE: I’ve detailed the Toshiba default build a bit here At the beginning of the month I order a new laptop, for the past few weeks I’ve been wanting something more mobile then my desktop, at first I was toying with the idea of selling my desktop and picking up a new Surface. The new Surface 3 which starts at £419 seemed like a good idea what with its sexy full hd touchscreen, however when you scratch the surface (ha ha) it doesn’t look so go...

I’ve been thinking lately about the adoption of version control. One of the common fears of using version control is that its permanent. All mistakes are visible and are in fact, highlight. Originals are updated with new commits which detail only the change and a nice comment. There is no hiding mistakes. The thing is Mistakes are what make us human. Everyone makes mistakes, we need to accept that fact. In doing so we can move forward faster....

I’ve been working on SQL Server 2014 lately and one of the annoying problems I’ve stumbled across using SSMS is that F5 no longer means execute the SQL query, it now means Debug. Which brings up an annoying popup (least for me) about configuring my Windows Firewall. This can be changed in SSMS by going Tools > Customize… > Keyboard… The default is: Debug.Start (F5 (Global)) And the traditional is:...

It appears the Local Government is looking to follow in schools footsteps and do an “Academy” – cutting the red tape and be given more control and freedom.

Tomorrow, Sunday the 7th December 2014, I will be celebrating 4 years of contributing wasted CPU cycles to the excellent Rosetta@Home project. Rosetta@home project is determining the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins through research, that may ultimately lead to finding cures for some major human diseases such as HIV, Malaria, Cancer, and Alzheimer’s. The project is lead by Dr David Baker at the Univerity of Washington. You can find out more about the Rosetta@Home project on their website – http://boinc....

So in my last blog post I asked, are you ready for IPv6? The post came about when I was looking at Schools MIS data, which Graham, Joshua and myself have being look at to see who are the big movers and shakers in the Schools administration software (MIS) arena. Data is collected by what software suppliers a school uses to submit the School Census (in England) which is requested under the Freedom of Information (FOI) from Department of Education(DfE) (saving having to FOI every individual school)....

For a long while now it has been known that IPv4 will run out of available publicly assignable IP addresses. IPv4 address are 32 bits wide and quite simply can’t cope with the demand of the modern world – despite NAT’ing. IPv6 looks to resolve this by have not only more digits, but also using hexadecimal. For example, an IPv4 address looks like this 192 . 168 . 0 . 1...