Ok dumbo brain let the laptop die but when explorer recovered completely including the radio play up to where I was listening now that is cool.

So here is why I got a 29110 error.  TFS 2008 was released before SQL 2008 so it does not support SQL 2008.  However TFS sp1 does.

 

But there isn't an integrated install for sp1 so you have to build it yourself.

 

The basic idea is that you take your install, run a merge with sp1 and generate to a separate directory and then copy it back over the top of your original install.

 

Here is the blog entry that helped though the details are in the TFS help.  I got stuck on accessing the help for a while as I forgot to access the file properties and select unblock.  The web content is blocked by default.

 

 

 

 

Spare me.  I mean how hard can installing TFS be.

 

I worked out my SQL connectivity and my Analysis Services Connectivity.  I installed Reporting Service cool and passed the validations.

 

Did it work, no way.  Error 29110 Reporting Services .... blah blah.

 

My google is burning with the issue but what is the problem.  Stay tuned.

Rob is demonstrating that he really  knows his way around a database execution plan.  His presentation is good.

Here we are in Wagga.  At least 100 people getting together in Wagga Waga to talk SQL.  Greg Low has put this all together. I'm giving the refined version of MDX for a SQL Dude course.

 

I'm looking forward to learning and hanging with the dudes and dudets.

Recently I have encountered the Generate Command.

 

It applies a member based set function with a set and then unions the result.  So the following is showing the parents of an Owner based on the Property Owner Lan ID but in this case we don't want the actual member but the parent i.e. the Sales Centre of the Owner where Owner is a Parent Child relationship,

 

 

Adam Cogan and Justin King present the differences between nHibernate and Linq to Entities.

 

It was a great session but every database guy in the house cringed.

It almost requires you to not use stored procedures ever again.  We didn't even attempt to review the quality of the SQL output.

 

Linq came out on top for functionality but some cried foul.  This will be extreemely productive for developers but once again we seem to be focusing on speed of development rather than quality of the outcome.

 

Greg Low talks date issues.  This session is unbelievable.  That after the Millenium Bug debacle we have loads of problems with dates is Bizare.

 

Here is a takeaway use YYYYMMDD as it is language independant but YYYY-MM-DD is not.

 

 

Ok here we are again in Wagga.  Having already had a pre conference half day.  It was uite good.  Greg gave a presentation on 2008 that was ineresting.  There should be quite a bit of stuff to sink our teeth into.

 

Jeff Wharton gave a presentation on compact edition of SQL Server and it was the first time I thouht hey this has a use.

 

Greg Low gave a session on presenting at Tech Ed pass etc.  I hope to take that away.

 

OK so I have visited Rob Farley and crew at the SQL Server group in Adelaide.  I was showing how to configure and install Integration services using a parent package and two child packages passing the connections strings from the parent to the child.

 

Here is the lab that I developed for the presentation.

 

 http://www.sqlserver.org.au/resources/ViewResource.aspx?resourceId=85

Here is a new one.  If you want to get access to Integration Services from a remote machine you need to use component services to update the access rights on the Com for MSDTSSrvr to grant rights as per this link.

 

 http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-US/library/aa337083.aspx

 

I did this and it still didn't work and then I realised that with Windows Server 2003 sp1 you needed to join a new domain group "Distributed COM Users".  Of course system administrators are members by default.  If you want to add a non administrator just add them to the built in security group under domain administration.

I have just returned from the first Business Intelligence Conference for Microsoft.  It was held in Seattle.  I was travelling with Grant Paisley of Angry Koala and it was an impressive time.  It was literally a who's who from Microsoft BI.

 

Here are some key people that helped me whilst I was there.  Mosha Pasumansky was helpful with MDX http://www.mosha.com/msolap/ mind you I felt a little ignorant after speaking to him.  Rob Zare of Microsoft was great in his session on Analysis Services and I can't wait to get my hands on the DVD to go over his session again.  Deepak Puri of Progressive must be the helpful guy in the world as we discussed how to handle daily pricing models along with Chriss Web http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com/ and Helmut Knappe of Solid Quality.

 

I got to know Bogdan Crivat who is part of the Data Mining team at Microsoft along with Jamie Maclennan who have inspired me to dig into Data Mining.

 

I will write some more when I get time but it was very cool.  The guys from Q4bis were great to meet along with the InfoSupport guys from the Netherlands.

 

So much more to say but we will get to it later.  All those that I met please feel free to drop me a line.

 

Last week the motherboard on my laptop had a bad hair day and started rejecting my battery.  So I had to give it up for 10 days and get it fixed.  Thus I bought me a server to work on until I got it back and loaded all my projects.

 

With my laptop now returned I felt it was time to put Vista on it and I am so happy.  Sure the dvd and the fingerprint login no longer work and I am still working through the Norton upgrade but at last hibernate and sleep work properly and it boots up heaps quicker.

 

Finally my laptop works like a laptop.

Today I needed to sort a collection.  It was a collection of class so I decided to assign them to an arraylist and sort them.

 

I found that if you implement iComparable which requires you to implement CompareTo it allows you to sort in a list.

 

I was doing a CostCentre class and so I added the following to the Cost Centre Class.

 

Well Peter Ward taught me something new.

 

Here is how to open internet explorer and run a url from within a dot.net application

 

After my earlier notes regarding naming conventions Glyn Llewellyn and I have changed the standard for FrontRow.  We now have decided to move type information to the end so that logically grouped items appear together e.g. LocationText, LocationBtn, LocationLbl etc.

 

During the discussion of standards the programmer reviewing my code reflected that the standards looked a little Old style.  I perceived that he was having a personal dig at my age (over 40) but his point is valid we should not stay with a standard that has no better basis than thats what I did with my old language.  If we did I would still be demanding 80 columns.

One of  the early calls I had was regarding proxy errors on Reporting Services.

 

If you get 407 errors after installing reporting services you can go to Internet Options, Select Connections, LAN Settings and if you are using a proxy server to check the bypass proxy server for local addresses.

 

Well yesterday when deploying a Report Viewer control in ASP.Net I got 407 errors.

 

Greg Low suggested the following link;

 

 

You learn a new thing every day. 

 

I have recently been doing some windows programmes and have encountered some interesting standards.  The first is to remove frm as a prefix from my forms.  I prefer frm as a prefix on forms as it keeps it consistant with other visible objects like name the Add buttons btnAdd or a Name text box txtName.

 

The frm prefix also makes finding forms in lists easier.

 

Ok for the last two weeks I have been to Windows development with VB.net and so I thought tell you what I like about VB.Net.  I am a C# guy.  I have a background in C and SQL Windows which lead somewhat to the C camp so I picked up C# first.

 

I like that when you declare a public property in types most of the snippet in for you.

I like that the RaiseEvent syntax is straight forward and easy to define.

I quite enjoy the handles clause on the delegate as it you don't need to look in two places.

I think its nice that you don't have to specify the type twice if you use the new clause in the Dim statement.

 

What I don't like

 

I have the _ for line continuation.

I miss the Regions but I haven't tried them in 2.0 yet.

I miss my ; on the end of the line

I don't like it when you are naming an event you have to enter the name and then the parameters, then what it handles and then go back and adjust everything for what you entered in name and parameters.

I miss the ptr++ syntax.

 

All in all no big deal

 

I was doing some categories and was using a tinyint as a key.  Being lazy I made it an identity column (bit of overkill I know).  When you join a tinyint to a tinyint with an identity column in a dsv it comes back that it is of a different type.  The easy fix was to use smallint instead.