Friday, March 27, 2009

You should have enough "Assets" to use Expression Blend 2 effectively

I posted previously that Expression Blend 2 SP1 returned an error when I tried to look up a XAML file created in a Silverlight Application project.

Now I know the reason. If you access the "Assets" in Expression Blend you will see a number of items. I had 36 of them but none of those that I posted about, namely DateePicker, Calendar and Label. Silverlight 3.0 has lot more assets than Expression Blend 2 SP1.
Next question: How do you add assets to Expression Blend2

Really, there should have been set up shared assets. Then this problem would not arise.


Edited April 01, 2009:
Expression Blend SP1 will not do:
Read this reply from Microsoft Connect:
http://connect.microsoft.com/Expression/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=426781 

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Problem with Microsoft Expression Blend 2 SP1

I have Expression Blend 2 SP1 which enables me to see bring up Visual Studio 2008 Silverlight 2.0 projects and look at the XMAL files. However, if the Visual Studio created XAML has elements like Label, DatePicker, Calendar etc Expression Blend will throw up an error as in the figure here.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Finally the book is published

I got a happy note from PACKT that the book I worked on for the better part of 2008 finally got published today.
I worked through couple of Microsoft betas and each time something or the other had to be re-written. Both Atif Shehzad and Marc Delisle did a great job of reviewing my book and I am highly obliged. The folks at Packt were very co-operative especially the group that did the final editing in Mumbai.
The book does not assume too deep a knowledge in SQL Servers but experience with some basic reporting tool such as Microsoft Access will be helpful. The book has over 50 hands-on exercises which is sufficient to experience the full flavor of Reporting à la Microsoft. Also there is a chapter on Crystal Reports which has remained a great companion of Microsoft all these years.
I thank PACKT publishing who gave me this second opportunity. This would not have been possible without the evaluation software from Microsoft and Crystal Reports. Other great resources that I have often drawn from are Microsoft Books online, Microsoft Developer Network as well as Microsoft beta testing program.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Data Transfer from MS Access to EnterpriseDB's PostGres


EnterpriseDB sits atop Postgres, the well known open source database server and leverages it to provide enterprise capabilities to Postgres users.

Out of the box EnterpriseDB's Migration Studio supports migration from SQL Server, Postgres and Sybase only. In this article, the Microsoft Integration Services is used to transfer a table form Microsoft Access 2003 to a database  on the EnterpriseDB Postgres server.

MS SQL Server Integration Services 2008 is a great product that handles various ETL Processes very effectively. However, sometimes its error messages can be confusing as you will see in this article. For example, where as the task execution has failed in this example, the data transfer has taken place.

Read on,

Transferring a table in a MS Access 2003 database to PostGres using SQL Server Integration Services 



This is a subscription site and you can login as guest and read free or join as a member using link for SSWUG.ORG on the main page.

If you are new to EnterpriseDB you may also want to read my other article first

Installation and basic features of EnterpriseDB
DMCA.com Protection Status