wetmatter nonsense

Recently I faced a problem with a mobile device (subscriber) which had a suspect database. I tried running the following command to check the database:

 DBCC CHECKDB ('databasename') 

 EXEC sp_resetstatus 'yourDBname';
 ALTER DATABASE yourDBname SET EMERGENCY
 DBCC checkdb('yourDBname')
 ALTER DATABASE yourDBname SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE
 DBCC CheckDB ('yourDBname', REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS)
 ALTER DATABASE yourDBname SET MULTI_USER 

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Typically in most cases you find yourself removing leading zeros but in this case I needed to add leading zeros to a column. 

Remove Leading Zeros

 SELECT CAST(CAST(ColumnName AS INT) AS VARCHAR(10)) FROM TableName

Let's Pad the field

Since I needed 6 chars this will add 3 spaces to the front of the numbers

 SELECT STR(ColumnName, 6) FROM TableName 

Add Leading Zeros

Let's say we need to add zeros to an employee id, well this would be an easy way to accomplish it. First we pad it with spaces and replace those spaces with zeros.

 SELECT REPLACE(STR(ColumnName, 6), SPACE(1), '0') FROM TableName 

SELECT SalesPersonID 
       ,REPLACE(STR(SalesPersonID, 6), SPACE(1), '0') AS PaddedSalesPID  
FROM   Sales.SalesPerson

Note: the SPACE(1) is equivalent to ' ' (That is a Tick Space Tick) So two Ticks with a space in between)

Update Table

UPDATE Sales.SalesPerson 
SET newSalesPID = REPLACE(STR(SalesPersonID, 6), SPACE(1), '0')

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I received a trouble support call from a client that encountered an error while attempting to print a Report via Reporting Services. The client was able to print before then suddenly it became an issue. Coincidentally Microsoft released two hotfixes (KB956803 & KB956391) which added a “kill-bit” associated to the ActiveX printing control used by Reporting Services 2005.

Hotfix KB956803 only affects Windows XP & Windows 2003 platforms while Windows 2000, Vista and 2008 platforms were not affected.  Hotfix KB956391 seems intended to patch vulnerabilities within the Office products.

There are a few ways to go about it and correct it:

Possible Solutions on the (Client Side)

1)      Uninstall both hotfixes (KB956803 & KB956391)

2)      Install the following Reporting Services update (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82833f27-081d-4b72-83ef-2836360a904d&DisplayLang=en)

3)      Delete a single key in the registry (Which is what I chose)

Corrective Steps for item 3

a)      I located and deleted the following key from the registry. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ActiveX Compatibility\{FA91DF8D-53AB-455D-AB20-F2F023E498D3}]

b)      Then I had restarted (close/re-launched) all IE sessions

c)       Browsed to the Reporting Services url

d)      Opened a report

e)      Clicked the print button (if you have or haven’t installed the print client you may or may not receive the yellow “Install ActiveX” dialog just below the IE header area. You may just receive the Print Dialog instead.)

f)       The report printed fine

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Recently I faced an issue with reporting services 2005 when attempting to deliver subscriptions to addresses outside of the organization. Internal addresses received the email based subscription deliveries without any questions. I must have checked and re-checked the settings using RSConfigTool about million times, looking for anything I might have overlooked. The error message I received was, "The e-mail address of one or more recipients is not valid". After some research (which lead me to a lot of dead ended forums) I read the phrase "email relay", that's when the gears started spinning.

I realized that the issue had nothing to do with the configuration of SQL Server Reporting Services; rather, the SMTP server! In order for the messages to be delivered outside of the organization the Reporting Services Server needed to be authorized so-to-speak. Unfortunately I don't have access to Exchange 2003 so I cannot provide screen shots, but for 2007 all you need to do is add the server's IP Address to the SMTP server’s receiver group in the HUB Transport configs.

Then to test your subscription without tweaking the schedule execution time just run the SQL job! First find out the name of the job by using the attached sql script, then execute the sp_start_job. If you have a named instance append $instancename to all three of ReportServer occurrences within the sql script (i.e. ReportServer$InstanceName) for MSSQL 2005. I believe for MSSQL 2008 you would append _InstanceName (i.e. ReportServer_InstanceName), but I am not certain. You should get the results similar to the screen shot attached.

   

Click here to download:

sqlshots_Delivering_subscripti.zip (54 KB)

Using the script with a default instance

 SELECT	
    sj.[name] AS [Job Name], 
    c.[Name] AS [Report Name], 
    c.[Path], 
    su.Description, 
    su.EventType, 
    su.LastStatus, 
    su.LastRunTime 
 FROM msdb..sysjobs AS sj INNER JOIN ReportServer..ReportSchedule AS rs 
    ON sj.[name] = CAST(rs.ScheduleID AS NVARCHAR(128)) INNER JOIN 
    ReportServer..Subscriptions AS su 
    ON rs.SubscriptionID = su.SubscriptionID INNER JOIN 
    ReportServer..[Catalog] c 
    ON su.Report_OID = c.ItemID 

Using the script with a named instance

 SELECT	
    sj.[name] AS [Job Name], 
    c.[Name] AS [Report Name], 
    c.[Path], 
    su.Description, 
    su.EventType, 
    su.LastStatus, 
    su.LastRunTime 
 FROM msdb..sysjobs AS sj INNER JOIN ReportServer$InstanceName..ReportSchedule AS rs 
    ON sj.[name] = CAST(rs.ScheduleID AS NVARCHAR(128)) INNER JOIN 
    ReportServer$InstanceName..Subscriptions AS su 
    ON rs.SubscriptionID = su.SubscriptionID INNER JOIN 
    ReportServer$InstanceName..[Catalog] c 
    ON su.Report_OID = c.ItemID 

Execute the report

 USE [msdb] 
 EXEC sp_start_job @job_name = 'AF015D8B-D80D-4D2A-9808-CD1D519B3332' 

Correction
In the attached file listed below I have identified a typo. Currently it states on
Line 19: sp_start_sp (which is incorrect) it should be
Line 19: sp_start_job

Click here to download:

SELECT.Get_RSSubscription_Jobs_v0.02.sql (0 KB)

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Typically you would use a JOIN clause when querying from multiple tables, but no one said you have to. Say for example you wanted to query two tables (tableA & tableB) which did not have any relationship (no one-to-one at all), yet there are fields in which would permit a comparison. Say street number, pre-direction, street name and the suffix.

Well you would compare
(tableA.street number = tableB.street number) and
(tableA.pre-direction = tableB.pre-direction) and
(tableA.street name = tableB.street name) and
(tableA.suffix = tableB.suffix).

Well I did not have a sample dataset for that illustration but I do have the AdventureWorks database, so here we go.

This first example will illustrate a query using a JOIN clause.

Results

This example illustrates a query without using a JOIN clause.

Results

As you can see the results are the same, but the queries are a tad different.

-- samson

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There are a lot of sites out there that give an in-depth definition of identity columns (this ain't one of them), but I have to admit that it was something I took for granted recently. In my task to clean up geospatial address data, specifically for geo-coding purposes I over looked the goodness of having an identity field as part of table. The data that I received did not have an ID field and for some odd reason I thought nothing of. I figured I would make updates by comparing multiple columns to target specific rows.  Well that worked fine until I realized that I had duplicate data. Digging myself deeper into a whole I kept doing things the hard way, well let's just say I did things the less efficient way.

Once I finally realized what I had been doing was inefficient I decided to introduce an ID field to the table. However old habits are hard to kill. Typically when I create ID fields I always leave (identity) off because I use UDFs to generate my sequential numbering. Reason being if there is ever a need to remove a record or delete a record (which seldom occurs since I use bit fields to designate active versus inactive records) the numbering continues. So if I have rows one through five and physically delete row five (ID 5), my next insert will become ID 6. Making the sequence 1,2,3,4,6.

Some may disagree but I really don't like that and no I am not OCD. It's just that I hate wasting IDs and avoid it whenever possible, hence my dilemma. So I add the column via the UI and save my changes. Then I start to think what is the best way to populate this newly added column. Not seeing the obvious (big rookie mistake on my part) I must have wasted 30 mins to an hour before I stepped away to grab a drink. Then all of a sudden it occurred to me that I could drop the column and re-add it via alter statement and all my worries would be gone. Which I did. You can do the same using the UI.

One simple single line could have prevented a self inflicted heartache because I was being an idiot. Once I ran it, the row was created and populated in sequential order. Just goes to show sometimes you need to step away from the task at hand to see what you are doing wrong! Granted I only needed the column temporarily; nonetheless, it helped a great deal when running bulk updates and having to compare a single column versus five to six. Especially when dealing with hundreds of thousands of records.

ALTER STATEMENT:

ALTER TABLE TableName ADD ID INT IDENTITY(1,1) 

Just to give you a visual of what exactly transpired here is little step by step (example data only):

BEFORE AND AFTER

1) SELECT * FROM TestTable

2) ALTER TABLE TestTable ADD ID INT IDENTITY(1,1)

3) SELECT * FROM TestTable

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