I’m currently getting bogged down with other projects and unfortunately my final sprint of SIMS Bulk Import has grind to a halt. On the plus side I managed to swash a few more bugs last month, get a code signing certificate. This will mean all future releases will be signed as coming from me which is great news, it adds a layer of confidence that the code you run is unaltered by a third party....
Tonight I was trying to get TeamCity to auto-update the version number for my SIMS Bulk Import application, however the simple AssemblyInfo Patcher just failed to work. No errors. Nothing. Then I read the manual, again… Note that this feature will work only for “standard” projects, i.e. created by means of the Visual Studio wizard, so that all the AssemblyInfo files and content have a standard location. So I created a new package which placed the AssemblyInfo....
Last night I chopped up my WIX installer project – I basically split the actual installer parts into one file – CoreMsi.wxs, the versions into a variable file – Version.wxi and the file list into a separate fragment file – SimsBulkImport.wxs. This worked. Great I thought, simple PowerShell script to generate the file list, I can even grab the main repository complied bin as a artifact dependency – got to love TeamCity....
Overview If your in the UK, the chances are your local school is using SIMS .net. Just checkout the stats on their site. 22,000 schools taking 2,500,000 children’s attendance, every day. That’s impressive. So what is SIMS .net? Well its a MIS system, but what is a MIS system? In the simplest terms its a database that holds the school records, for both students and staff. So it makes sense that you are going to want to interface with it as it’s your at your core when it comes to data sources....
I’ve finally gotten round to setting up the VDS Mythic-Beasts have kindly donated to host the API backend for one of my open-source projects. A few nights ago I enabled IPv6 and today when I went to run apt-get update it just hung saying: 0% [Connecting to gb.archive.ubuntu.com (2a01:450:10:1::10)] As they had previously worked, I suspect it’s IPv6 problem, quick google and… http://askubuntu.com/questions/272796/connecting-to-archive-ubuntu-com-takes-too-long For sites which prefer IPv4 connections change the last line to precedence ::ffff:0:0/96 100 Bingo....
I always find it funny when IT departments talk about BI for their company and they don’t actually have a BI solution in place for themselves. Surely you should practice what you preach? So why do IT departments need BI. Well lets look at Rosetta@home. Jul 30, 2014 We are aware of significant network slow-down between the subnet upon which our servers sit and the Internet beyond the UW campus. We are working with the UW’s Network Operations team to pinpoint the cause....
Back in May (2014) I decided to start up a blog, again. I decided to keep it simple and just get a off the shelf hosting package rather then going to extremes like I normally do – configuring a VPS or even a Dedi server! I ended up going with CS New Media – it was just their lite Linux package which I signed up for 3 months. I was tempted to stick with what I know and go with Mythic-Beasts like I normally but I like to tinker and try new things so I went with CS New Media after a failed attempt to spend my dosh with NameCheap – when it came to entering my card details, it just failed to connect to “their” backend and their response was, well it works for me, try another browser – by the time I phoned them I had already tried different browsers, internet connections, computers so at that point I just walked away....
Well my day is finally coming to an end, my bed is calling me after a long day. If I had thought about it more I would have packed a few cans of Pepsi Max and probability took a half day at work, as it was I spent my lunch break by coming home and taking my son to the park*, then heading off to Cambridge after work for mine and my colleagues first Cambridgeshire SQL Server User Group....
I’ve currently been working on a PowerShell script to build a virtual server using DigitalOcean excellent RESTful API. So far this has gone extremely well and I have been impressed with both PowerShell and DigitalOcean’s API. Today however I tried running on another machine (an important part of development) only to find it doesn’t work. The first error that appears is: The term ‘Invoke-WebRequest’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable progr...
Another little gem, clearing out those pesky recent projects from your menu on Visual Studio 2012. Fire up RegEdit and navigate to: Files: HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Visual Studio\11.0\FileMRUList\ Proj: HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Visual Studio\11.0\ProjectMRUList\ Usual disclaimer http://nathondalton.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/clear-visual-studio-recent-project-and-files/
Found this little gem – appears they actually made those really cool interfaces they used in Tron Legacy: http://www.robscanlon.com/encom-boardroom/
I’ve created a new SQL user along with a new role in our warehouse db project using Visual Studio 2012. CREATE LOGIN [newuser] WITHPASSWORD=’{{ RANDOM PASSWORD }}’,DEFAULT_DATABASE=[Database] GO CREATE USER [newuser] FORLOGIN [newuser] WITHDEFAULT_SCHEMA=[dbo] GO ALTER ROLE [newrole] ADD MEMBER [newuser] GO Problem is, the user is disabled. When you do it manually via SQL Management Studio, it’s enabled and working. Manually enabling the account doesn’t allow it connect either. A quick Google revealed:...
In my day job I’ve been looking at SQL Server 2012 recently (I know SQL Server 2014 out before you say anything!), I’ve had a developer license for a while but unfortunately other priorities have been consuming my time and I’ve only managed to get a dev server build, SQL 2012 installed and not much else up till a few days ago. Our current Business Intelligence platform is using SQL Server 2008 (not R2) for the database backend and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) BIDS for the ETL....
I received NameCheap newsletter today full of annoying holes (at least for me), needless to say I hit the unsubscribe button shortly after. First mistake – mark your calendars. Did they not check their calendar before sending it? The June 10 was 2 weeks ago! $1, one dollar!! You’re trying to promote .UK, use the local currency, using £ (GBP)! Final mistake I notice (I didn’t look very hard to be honest) was the “SCHOOLSOUT” code....
Well it appears Capita has announced SOLUS2 death day That’s assuming they don’t put it back. Again. This is bad news. Let me explain why. I’m using Chrome, it’s updated itself I don’t know how many times. If I go and check, all I know or care about is that it is indeed up-to-date, so at some point, it’s updated itself and its worked. If I look at my antivirus I can see it’s updated 3 times today alone....
I haven’t really been on SupportNet, Capita SIMS support portal, regularly since changing roles about 20 months ago, the only time I pop on nowadays is to find something when I’m helping out my old team during busyhard times (you never really escape at my work). On this occasion I stopped by the forum and one thing jumped out at me. The lack of progress. Now I appreciate I’m about to unload both barrels into my foot, but I think it needs to be said....
One of the things you’ll find when your going to interviews for your first job after leaving education is that they ask the same types of questions. The main one that feels me with dread is “Give an example of good customer service you have provided”. I hate that question. Hopefully your interviewer would have been kinda enough to at least state that, as you are ill experienced, you might want to give examples of good customer service you have received....
I have to say I’m really liking Twitter. A lot of my friends can’t see the point. As a social tool it allows gossip to flow really well, how often do we hear that a celeb has tweeted a inappropriate comment or photo. It allows us fans to be alot more closer. As a business tool it allows a new way of interaction, take this example – there is a bug in ....
An interesting debate erupted on EduGeek this month after Graham Reed, a technologist, made a post on Eduware Consulting blog about the changing data landscape and how he saw Department of Education (DfE) data exchange and warehouse projects changing the way MIS work and the way they are used. Now of course we need to take it with a pinch of salt, firstly, this is very much early days. At the moment it’s a vision looking to become a project, and we all know how government projects end up post election time....
One of the common questions I used to get asked whilst supporting SIMS .net was, do I need Full SQL. SIMS .net uses Microsoft SQL Server as it’s relational database management system (RDBMS) so it’s important to ensure the engine is correctly sized for job at hand. Microsoft SQL Server has come in a number of editions over the years, I won’t detail all the various editions but the two editions schools should be concerned with is Express and Standard....