Tau Liang's Blog

Chrome apparently became the 2nd most popular browser already. A laggard as usual, I decided to finally give it a shot.  It happened that my car tag renewal was due, so I went to our friendly DMV web site to renew it. At the end of the workflow, there is a screen for for printing the confirmation of payments. Here it is:

It couldn’t do it. I guess so much for my Chrome experience.

I know, I know, Firefox 2.0 is so yesterday. The latest is 8.x already. I happen to have a laptop running Windows XP SP1 with Firefox 2.0 for testing, and I sidetracked myself a bit surfing around for a few minutes on my frequently visited SNS sites:

• Facebook

• Twitter

• LinkedIn

• Google Plus

From the screenshots above, LinkedIn easily tops the most friendly SNS site for Firefox 2.0. No wonder it is my favorite.

SQL Server codename “Denali” CTP3, including Project “Crescent” is now publically available. This is awesome!

Project Crescent Demo

What’s New in Microsoft SQL Server Code-Named “Denali” for Reporting Services

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/DBI211

BI Power Hour

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/DBI201

It is pretty exciting to see it announced to the general public.  It greatly simplifies the ways user interact with data. A teaser video is available online for a sneak preview of its capabilities.

Candlestick is a pretty useful technical indicator for trading equities. Some people built business around it. And it is pretty straightforward to create candlestick charts in Report Builder 3.0 (RB3.0)  for reporting services. Today I’ll give a five-minute walkthrough of how to do it in RB3.0.

Data Preparation

1. Download data from Yahoo.
2. The download is usually a CSV file, save it on disk, use SQL Server Management Studio to import the data into a database table (e.g., table SPY under database AdventureStocks. Make sure that data types of the columns are updated appropriately (the default is string).

Create Report

1. Start RB3.0, pick “New Report”.
2. Create a new data source connecting to the database on localhost.
3. Create a dataset from querying the SPY table.
4. On RB3.0 canvas, insert chart, select “Candlestick” under “Range” type.
5. Drop “Date” to X axis and it will show up in “Category Groups”.
6. Drop “Open” to “Values”.
7. Select data series on chart and configure its properties as follows:
8. Adjust Minimum and Maximum axis values in Vertical Axis Properties to fit with the OLHC values of SPY.
9. Preview the report and it is all set.

RDL Specification

• 2000
• 2005
• 2008
• 2008 R2 (XPS)

2005 White Papers

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa964128%28SQL.90%29.aspx
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa964129%28SQL.90%29.aspx
• Integration (2005 SP2) with SharePoint

2008 White Papers

• http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/wp-sql-2008-reporting-services.aspx
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff679930.aspx

SQL Server Training Kits

• SQL Server 2008 R2 Training Kit
• SQL Server 2008 Training Kit

Books

• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services
• Applied Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services
• Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services Recipes: for Designing Expert Reports

My Favorite Links

1. http://www.vincehuston.org/dp/
2. http://www.dofactory.com/Default.aspx
3. http://www.netobjectives.com/PatternRepository/index.php?title=Main_Page

My Favorite DP Books

1. Head First Design Patterns
2. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
3. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
4. Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design

SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 added support for SQL Azure data source. It is nice to have as this makes it easier to put one foot of your report into the cloud. Sometimes, report server throws this mysterious (and much dreaded) error:

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server)

It usually happens like this: report works in Report Builder, report works in BIDS, SQL Server Management Studio has no trouble whatsoever connecting to the data source, but, once the report is deployed to the server and when user tries to run it, out of the blue, this error jumps out.  As the message suggests, it is a network issue. Usually, the SQL Azure data source has to be access via a proxy (e.g., Reporting Services get to it through ISA client installed on the report server).  You can configure the Report Server service to run under any of these account types:

• Least-privileged Windows user account
• NetworkService
• LocalSystem
• LocalService

And the service account is the one being used to get across the proxy and reach out to the SQL Azure server sitting in the cloud.  If your reporting server is running behind the firewall, more often than not, only a “Least-privileged Windows user account” has permission on the proxy server to sneak out. Thus, if Report Server is using any of the other three as the service account, chances are good that it won’t be able to get hold of a connection to SQL Azure server. I hope the workaround is obvious to you at this point now, yes, set the service account to a least-privileged Windows user account which happens to have permission on the proxy server.

1. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff519560%28SQL.105%29.aspx
2. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms160340.aspx