Deep-Dive sessions at Peradeniya University

This was my third visit to Peradaniya University, we (Wela, Prabath, Susantha, Tharindu, and me ) did set of sessions on .NET, C#, and SQL Server, and everything went very well, a lot of questions..... Here are some photos: Wela: Showing Silverlight
Dinesh: Delivering SQL Server presentation
Prabath: Delivering presentation on C#
Susantha: Showing Windows Operating Systems
Tharindu: Explaining the importance of communities-Student Champ
Part of the audience

A lesson from my son - History of Computers

Thought to make a post on this, may help you to brush up your computer history knowledge too :) • The name of the first computer is ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) • Abacus is the first known calculating device invented in China. • Charles Babbage is known as the Father of computers, who invented the first mechanical computer which was called the Analytical Engine.

Be in the know

I was not in the know, if you too, read this Merill's post, it is about the history of Microsoft Office Web Apps.

Connect to 64-bit Oracle 10g from Reporting Services 2008

Recently, I had to create couple of Reporting Services 2008 reports by using Oracle 10g as the data source. I had to use one machine as the developer machine and the server. Server was installed with 64-bit Windows 2008 and SQL Server 2008 64-bit. Oracle was installed in another machine and it was 64-bit too. Here are some of the problems, issues I faced, It may help you too. Connectivity problem with BIDS First problem I faced was connectivity with Oracle in BIDS. I tried to use Oracle provider that comes with SQL Server installation but it did not work. So the solution was, install Oracle full client (Administrator). What should be installed? 32-bit or 64-bit? In order to make the connection via BIDS, we need to install Oracle 32-bit client though the server is 64-bit. The main reason for this is, BIDS is a 32-bit application. Once 32-bit Oracle client installed, BIDS was able to connect to Oracle. Connectivity problem with Report Manager This was the second problem. Once the reports are publish, I got the same error when reports are viewed with Report Manager. This is because it requires Oracle 64-bit client. Once Oracle 64-bit client installed, it started working. OLEDB Provider for Oracle or Microsoft Oracle Provider? When I google, I saw some posts related this provider, it seems that Microsoft Oracle provider had not worked for many but it worked for me. I was able to make connection by using both providers. Passing Parameters to Oracle As usual, we can use "?" for represent parameters in the query if the provider is OLE DB (eg. WHERE column1 = ?). But remember, you need to use ":" for parameters if the provider is Microsoft Oracle provider (eg. WHERE column1 = :Parameter1) IN Clause with WHERE "IN" is not supported by OLE DB provider. If you have a requirment that needs to use "IN" with "WHERE", use Microsoft Oracle provider instead.

Finally.....

IIS 7 Stopped. PerformancePoint Error ???

It hit me again, this is the second time I experienced this problem. My VPC with Windows 2008, SQL Server 2008 and MOSS 2007 was working fine until I installed and configured the PerformancePoint. My bad, I did not take a backup of my VPC. Once the PerformancePoint configured (with SP3), I noticed that the Default Application Pool was getting stopped even after restarting and resetting. The entire IIS 7 stopped working. The error was 503, Service is unavailable. I applied all the solutions what I found with my searches, but as most have done, I have to start from the beginning. No solutions, but reinstall whole thing.......

PerformancePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 3

If you are unaware of SP3, here is the link, x86 and x64.

PerformancePoint error: Part III - Unable to connect to Server - SSRS 2008

It hit again, this time it is with Reporting Services 2008. PerformancePoint allows to connect with Reporting Server and lets to browse reports in the server, but the problem comes when we try to connect with the report. When the report is selected from the Browser, it throws an error saying "Unable to connect to server". After few minutes, we realized that the problem comes only with reports that have parameters, other reports can be connected. This is a bug and the hotfix is available here. For your reference, I had blogged two more issues I faced before, you can find them here (Part II)and here (Part I).

DML, DDL, DCL, TCL, DQL

When we discuss, when I teach, the mostly discussed SQL Server related languages are DML and DDL. But do you know that there are few more categories, they are DCL, TCL and DQL. Here is a brief note of it; DML - Data Manipulation Language - statements that perform changes to the database. Eg. INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE DDL - Data Definition Language - statements that modify objects in the database. Eg. CREATE TABLE, CREATE VIEW, DROP PROCEDURE DCL - Data Control Language - statements that controls the rights to objects. Eg. GRANT, DENY, REVOKE TCL - Transactional Control Language - statements that controls transactions in the database. Eg. COMMIT, ROLLBACK, SAVE POINT DQL - Data Query Language - statements that query the database. Eg. SELECT