Microsoft Vision: Project Portfolio Management

This is a brief summary from the Project 2014 Conference in Anaheim, CA Feb 2014. This is really about consolidating Microsoft assets: Project online, Office 365, SQL Servers, Azure, Project Apps and so on and how they are going to play out in the future.

Details of Project Online here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/

                
There is a 1 hour long marathon video on the following site detailing the road map for project portfolio management:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Project/2014/KEY002
Here are some screen shots:

 

 

 

 

 

No project without reporting!

 

Also watch this SSRS Report Enabler for Project Online by Project Hosts here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10tDxtla3NI
 

Easy to follow no-nonsense books on Reporting Services:

 

 

http://www.packtpub.com/learning-sql-server-2008-reporting-services/book

 

 

http://www.packtpub.com/learning-sql-server-reporting-services-2012/book

Packt is having a 4day Columbus day sale, check out.

Explore something new this Columbus Day with Packt’s biggest ever sale

Packt Publishing is giving everyone the chance to explore its full range of over 1600 DRM-free eBooks this Columbus Day at a massive 50% off at www.packtpub.com, for 4 whole days.

Customers simply use the code COL50 in their cart – as many times as they like until Thursday October 17th. The offer even extends to Packt’s bestselling pre-order of 2013, the highly acclaimed Mastering Web Application Development with AngularJS. 

But that’s not all – to mark the transition out of beta stage, the publisher will also be including its Packt Video product range in this limited offer. These practical screencast tutorials give users the working knowledge they need to get the job done, and all videos will be featured in the Columbus Day sale at 50% off – that includes the hugely popular Kali Linux - Backtrack Evolved: A Penetration Tester’s Guide. 

Of course you may also get my following books during this mega sale. God bless Columbus!!

All links to my books are available here:
http://hodentek.blogspot.com

New book is being written: SQL Server Querying with SQL Server 2012

Mahalo,

 

Get your discount from here:

http://bit.ly/1bqvB29 and use this discount code: COL50

 

Developer targeted LocalDB installs with SQL Server Express 2012

LocalDB was first introduced in 'Denali' and it continues be simple compared to SQL Express and at the same time compatible with other editions of SQL Servers regarding APIs.
Please refer to following previous posts on how it could be used with VS2010:

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2011/09/visual-studio-2010-does-not-support.html
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2011/09/visual-studio-2010-does-support-localdb.html

So where does LocalDB position itself among the various SQL Server editions?

Well, it certainly does not have everything that the higher versions of SQL Servers have but it is an embeddable, small foot print database that you just spawn from your application and connect to a database file (type MDF which has an associated LDF) to work, without needing to go through a higher version of SQL Server. Of course you will only be developing what the LocalDB can provide. You will notice that SQL Server Compact server could also be connected to file based data (type SDF) but the LocalDB has full API capabilities of higher versions of SQL Server. With the Compact version you could only do a few things, certainly much less than what you can do with LocalDB. It has a larger foot print than SQL Server Compact but more powerful. Another difference is that LocalDB is a separate process while SQL Server compact is an in-proc DLL.

Get your full dose of SQL Server compact from the following links:
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2011/01/sql-server-compact-problems.html
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2010/07/sql-server-compact-35-with-sql-server.html
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2008/07/sql-server-2008-rc0-and-visual-studio.html
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2010/07/connecting-to-sql-server-ce-from-visual.html
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2009/11/connecting-to-sql-server-compact-from.html
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2010/08/are-you-ready-to-see-light-with.html
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2008/04/new-data-flow-destinations-in-vs-2008s.html

These are some of the features that you may want to note while using LocalDB:

• LocalDB is very easy to use and you can have as many applications as you like and have an instance of LocalDB with them. However you will be using the same sqlsrvr.exe to connect to a database file.
• LocalDB can be started from SQLSrvr.exe in its installation folder but if the LocalDB has not started the application can start it if the application uses LocalDB. If the LocalDB is up, the application just connects to it. The connection is terminated when the application exits.
• The instance of LocalDB has no database services; it stays as long as the application is on and goes out when the application exits. You will be connecting the LocalDB to a database in the application with a very easy connection path.
• LocalDB can use the same APIs as SQL Server Express so that you can connect using the same client-side providers such as ADO.NET, ODBC, etc.
• If the computer has multiple users each user can have his own LocalDB as described in the following post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlexpress/archive/2011/07/12/introducing-localdb-a-better-sql-express.aspx

In fact LocalDB can be installed and used by itself although it has no management capabilities. Follow this link to LocalDB Installer:
http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/pd/SQLEXPCTAV2/enus/default.aspx
You need to specify the version you want as shown here:















You can install it from command line as the next snippet shows:

msiexec /i SqlLocalDB.msi /qn IACCEPTSQLLOCALDBLICENSETERMS=yes

License is important. Note that LocalDB(x32) will not install on (x64) bit machines. Refer to Window Installer blogs to see the reason why.

An installation of SQL Server Express 2012 also installs a LocalDB as shown here for the (x64) version of SQL Server Express 2012 installed on a (x64) bit Windows 7 Home Premium running on a Toshiba Satellite 775 laptop with Intel core i7-2670QM @2.20GHZ and 8.00 GB memory.

Please refer to my books on SQL Servers which deal with all aspects of connecting to SQL Servers, SQL Server Compact and many other database products. You will also learn about SQL Server management, security; many aspects of Business Intelligence and creating applications that leverage SQL Servers:

http://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-visual-studio-lightswitch-business-application-development/book










https://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-sql-azure-enterprise-application-development/book

https://www.packtpub.com/learning-sql-server-2008-reporting-services/book

http://www.packtpub.com/sql-server-integration-services-visual-studio-2005/book

The SQL Server Express 2012 did install LocalDB but when I tried to run it from SqlSrvr.exe I was faced with this problem (see next figure). May be I need to reinstall or repair the SQL Server Express 2012. More of it in a future post. However connecting to SQL Express from Management Studio presented no problem. Right now I have only SQL Server Express 2012 but when I install Visual Studio 2011 Beta I will try creating an application that requires a LocalDB.

What was your experience?

SQL Server Report based on an ad hoc query

In my previous article on DotNetSlackers site I described creating an EnterpriseDB Linked server on SQL Server 2008. In this article the idea is carried forward to create a SQL Server 2008 report based on a distributed Ad hoc query using data on the SQL Server 2008 and a linked MS Access 2003 database. The article describes step by step the procedure to create such a report using Report Builder 2.0. The idea is generic and can be adopted for other scenarios as well.

Review the following article for more details,
Authoring a SQL Server Report Using an Ad hoc query

Do more by learning to work efficiently with SQL Server Reporting services.

* Get two free chapters of my book 'Learn SQL Server Reporting Services 2008' from the pubisher's web site.

Chapter 1 hands-on exercises in "Learning SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services"

The step-by-step hands-on in this chapter is really to perusade and guide the user to install appropriate software after evaluating the resources he/she has on the user computer. This is going to be a one-man/woman show. One user with one computer doing all the stuff.

The hands-on exercises are:

* Installing a named instance of SQL Server 2008

* Reviewing the installation

* Installing a test database

* Configuring the Reporting Services

There is a lot of information and a lot of screen shots to make it an effortless experience.

Have fun.

This book may be purchased from here :

Handling a deployment error in Reporting Services

You created a great looking report in Visual Studio 2008 using a Report Server Project template and now you try deploying it by hitting the deploy menu item in the report's drop-down contextual menu. You get an error that it cannot be deployed. Specifically you get the following Microsoft Report Designer error:


Could not connect to the report server . Verify that the TargetServerURL is valid and that you have the correct permissions to connect to the report server.

------------------------------
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Unable to connect to the remote server (System)

------------------------------

No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it IPAddress:Port(System)

------------------------------
BUTTONS:

OK
------------------------------

The first thing to know is that the Report Server you are deploying your report to is not the web server. Used to be Web Server in Visual Studio 2005 but not in Visual Studio 2008.

Although your TargetServerURL is set correctly to the ReportServer's URL it is possible that the server has not started.

Now use the Reporting Services Configuration Manager, or otherwise, connect to the Server and start it.

You can now deploy the report (the deployment success/failure will be displayed in the output window).

Get a jump start with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services with the Hands-on loaded book from yours truly,

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2009/01/it-was-very-good-year.html

2008 was a very good year

During 2008 I managed to write more than 18 articles and a book. Got a lot of positive response from readers which has encouraged me to do better in 2009.

The following articles are available on the Packt site

VB.NET Application with SQL Anywhere 10 database
Migrating MS Access 2003 Data using the Oracle SQL Developer 1.2
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 - Installation Made Easy

Moving a Database from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 in Three Steps
Windows Presentation Foundation Project - Basics of Working
Understand and Use Microsoft Silverlight with JavaScript

Term Extraction Tasks in SQL Server Integration Services
Creating a Web Page for Displaying Data from SQL Server 2008
Copying a Database from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 using the Copy Database Wizard

Creating a Simple Report with Visual Studio 2008
Data Processing using Derived Column and Aggregate Data Transformations
Creating an Analysis Services Cube with Visual Studio 2008 - Part 1

Creating an Analysis Services Cube with Visual Studio 2008 - Part 2
Using the Data Pager Control in Visual Studio 2008
Oracle SQL Developer Tool 1.5 with SQL Server 2005

A Simple Pocket PC Application using Visual Studio 2005

These two appeared on other sites.

Web enabling data on a SQL Anywhere Server using a native web service

Retrieving Data on a SQL Anywhere Server Using AJAX

Consuming a SQL Anywhere native web service using a .NET client
International Sybase Users Group Technical Journal, May / June 2008, Pages 14 - 19

The first book had favorable reception and reviews (9) from readers. There were some adverse (2) reviews as well.

I thank all the reviewers and more importantly my readers.

The second book is in its final stages and will be published during the first quarter of 2009. You may order early copies with a discount from Packt. I have tried to make it as comprehensive as possible with more than 50 hands-on exercises. I hope it is as useful as I think it will be.

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.

Presently this is not working in SQL Server Integration Services 2008

Whereas the Web Service Task can connect to the Report Server Web Service the methods of the service are not accessible. This will be addressed in the next major release [see link below].




https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=367597&wa=wsignin1.0

Report Builder 2.0 with RC1 applied looks good

I was discouraged about Report Builder 2.0 but now with RC1 applied we can pursue the Game.
Looks good at first take.

Don't tarry, Get the RC1. You need to point the upgrade to your Report Server.

On turning on, turning off Reporting Services Functionality

Please refer to this entry,
http://hodentekhelp.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-do-you-turn-on-and-turn-off-report.html

Report Processing in SSRS 2008

Read this short note extracted and summarized from the Books-on line,

http://hodentekhelp.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-are-reports-processed-on-report.html