Thursday, October 30, 2008

Moon shot, entry visa and the coming elections

What do they have in common?

View this guy making a case for Visas.

Moon shot

Well you can guess what's the impact of the election outcome.

Crystal Reports 2008's Cool Features

Mini Review

With a few clicks I created a report with some grouping. Embedded the report in an ASP.NET page (VS 208) and displayed it in a browser. It is already on my intranet.

The Group Tree and Parameters featues were automatically present.

With Parameters icon clicked you can pick and choose items from the group list and keep them all as tabbed pages. I have four tabbed groups, Main Report, ALFIKI, CACTU  and FAMIA(showing).
Click on the Group tree and you have the 'document' map with drilldown features.









You can export any of these to several formats.


You can also set the number of pages you can send.












Don't you think these are cool features.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Can you use Cubes created using SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 in Crystal Reports 2008?

Yes and No.

There are three options for using the cube in Crystal Reports 2008:

  • Using Olap Server
  • Using Local Cube file(.CUB)
  • Using HTTP Cube

Using OLAP Server: Yes

Using Local Cube file (.CUB): NO

When I tried to use a Local Cube file created in VS 2008, I could not. SSAS 2008 creates CUBEs with the extension .cube
Crystal Reports 2008 will look for a CUBE with the extension .cub. This is the only choice while browsing for a cube in Crystal Reports 2008.

Using HTTP Cube: Not tested yet

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Happy Deepavali

Deepavali is the festival of lights in India.

I wish the readers of my blog a very happy deepavali (aka Diwali in India North)

We wish you all the very best in this festive season. Happy Deepavali 2008

ದೀಪಾಳಿ ಶುಬಾಶಯಗಳು
Jayaram Krishnaswamy

Debug an ASPNET page

Debugging is not a default. You need to enable debugging acording to:



Add this Page directive: debug=true

1. You have to setup the website for Windows Integrated security
default is Anonymous logon. You have to place a check mark for
Windows Authentication as shown.




2. IE Script Debugging may be enabled:(disabled is default)

Enable this using:
IE | TOOLS | Internet Options||Advanced Tabs
Under Browsing Category
Clear 'Disable Script Debugging(IE)' check box.

Happy Debugging

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

How to write text vertically in a textbox in Report Builder 2.0?

There is a WritingMode property of a textbox. But it cannot render the horizontal text DESIGN as


D
E
S
I
G
N

One way to do this is to use an expression.
The following expression will do just that:

="D"+vbcrlf+"e"+vbcrlf+"s"+vbcrlf+"i"+vbcrlf+"g"+vbcrlf+"n"


Here is a picture of that:

Improved Report Builder 2.0

One of the GUI related problem in my previous post has been rectified and a new version (10/21/2008) of Report Builder has been released.

The New Table and Matrix wizard had this problem:

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2008/09/some-observations-on-new-table-or.html

There was a work around but in some cases it could have caused a confusion. This has been rectified and the latest version is available for download according to Microsoft's Connect.

"Thank you for using Report Builder 2.0. The Arrange page of the wizard and the wizard overall was cleaned up between the RC build and the now released final version. Specific to your comments, you can remove a field by dragging it from one of the field group boxes to the white space in the middle. The final released version can be downloaded from the following location. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f783224-9871-4eea-b1d5-f3140a253db6&displaylang=en "

If you are into SSRS download the new version.

Visual Studio 2008 and XHTML Validation

In Visual Studio 2008 the Default.aspx page you get when you create a new web site has the following statement regarding HTML document:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd" >

For exmaple, in order to get the following:

<hr width="800px" align="left" / >

older type html fragment to work, you need to use the following which conforms to CSS 2.0:

<hr style="text-align:'left'; width:'800px'"/>

However, VS2008 produces this error during validation:

Error 1 Validation (CSS 2.0): ''800px'' is not a valid value for the 'width' property.

In CSS 2.0, the width can have the following values, auto | a unit| inherit

However instead of inline styling if you use the style (generated by the IDE) as in::

<style type='text/css'>
hr{
font-family: 'Times New Roman' , Times, serif;
text-align: left;
height: auto;
visibility: visible;
display: inline;
width: 400px;
}
</style>

 you will not get this validation error.

Note that in older browsers IE treated hr as an inline element, while the others treated it as a block element.

I have often come across the validation errors in VS 2008. If you do come across them look up this useful reference:

http://gchandra.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/validation-xhtml-10-transitional-a-newer-construct-is-recommended/

also:
http://www.w3schools.com/CSS/CSS_reference.asp

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Rich Text Formatting in Reporting Services

It is possible to mix formatting ( like in A thing of beauty is a joy for ever) in reporting services.

Here is an example.
The description field which is below the 'Beverages' has mixed formatting.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Friday, October 03, 2008

Done deal, what now?

It finally got through

Let's watch for the fallout...

Dow is down!!!!

<--- Place holder for video captured from the TV (Waiting for Blogger to rectify the interface --->


Thursday, October 02, 2008

Where else you can find my blog posts?

The recent entries in my Hodentek blog also appear here at Amazon.com's book site:

http://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Server-Integration-Services-Visual/dp/1847193315

By the way for the price you pay you get a lot of ROI. What it means is you start with knowing nothing about SSIS, and end up getting a good hands-on experience as some of the reviewers have commented. You can do all this in under 15 days.

I have blog at Amazon.com as well. Most of them are syndicated from this site. I do post some articles on this as well.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/A2LD0K0XDS9GAA/ref=cm_blog_dp_a
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