First off, I want to start by saying I don't know a whole lot about Reporting Services. 
We recently had an issue where a staff member told us that they hadn't been receiving a certain report. When I logged onto Reporting Services and tested the connection to the data source I was getting "Unspecified Error". Not too helpful. I then tried to find the last successful run. I could not find this in the Reporting Services interface. However, there is a view named ExecutionLog2 that had what I wanted.
SELECT TOP 100 elog.status, elog.TimeStart, elog.*
FROM [dbo].[ExecutionLog2] elog
WHERE elog.reportPath = 'MyReportPath'
AND elog.UserName = 'MyReportUser'
ORDER BY elog.timestart DESC
We actually ended up restarting the Reporting Services service and the "Unspecified Error" went away. I just thought I'd post this in case it helps anyone else.
I really like storing Session State out-of-process in a SQL Server database. However, I use custom code that switches the connection string based on the current environment my code is running in (test, stage, production, etc.). It was a little tricky to get this setup properly. But I am pretty happy with the following solution.
namespace MyApplication.Utility
{
public class SessionConnStringResolver : System.Web.IPartitionResolver
{
public void Initialize() { }
// Return the correct ASP.NET Session DB for the current running environment
public String ResolvePartition(Object key)
{
// Custom code to get connection string based on current environment
return MyConfigClass.GetConfigSettings.SessionDBConnString;
}
}
}
If you are using LINQ to SQL you should also set Serialization Mode to Unidirectional on the Object Relational Designer as discussed in this link. This allows you to serialize/deserialize your LINQ classes when saving to the database.
For a better explanation of the Partition Resolver feature of SQL Server Session State see the following links. Above is just the steps I followed to set everything up.
The FreeTextTable function in SQL Server is very useful when you need to search a column for words, phrases, etc. FreeTextTable will return a table that you can join on. It also returns the Rank of the matches so you can order the most relevant matches at the top.
In the example below I am searching the Keywords column of the MyTable table using the @Keywords passed into the stored procedure. I am then ordering them by Rank so the highest matches show up first.
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[FreeTextSample]
@Keywords [varchar](1000) = ''
WITH EXECUTE AS CALLER
AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
SELECT myTable.MyPrimaryKeyID,
myTable.Title,
myTable.Description
FROM MyTable myTable(nolock)
INNER JOIN FreeTextTable(dbo.MyTable, Keywords, @Keywords) AS searchTable
ON myTable.MyPrimaryKeyID = searchTable.[KEY]
ORDER By searchTable.[RANK] DESC
END
GO
One thing to note is that LINQ does not contain an equivalent keyword for FreeTextTable. So what I did was to create a new method on my DataContext that returns the results of the stored procedure. See my post here for further details on how to do this.
We saw the above message in SourceSafe after moving to SQL Server 2008 and then saving the scripts for our tables back to SourceSafe. It appears that SQL 2008 Management Studio uses a different text encoding than prior versions of Management Studio/Enterprise Manager.
To save your script using a specific text encoding. You can "Save as.." and then there is an arrow to the right of the Save button. Click this and select "Save with Encoding...". Then you can select the specific encoding you need. In my case I needed to change the encoding from "Western Eurpean (Windows) - Codepage 1252" to "Unicode - Codepage 1200".
I tend to look this up quite a bit, so here it is for quick reference. This converts a datetime column into a MM/DD/YYYY format.
UPDATE MyTable
SET DateColumn2 = CONVERT(varchar(10), DateColumn1, 101)
When creating an advanced search you often need to dynamically create the Where statments in your SQL. Here is an easy way to do this in LINQ. In the example below orderID, lastName, firstName, shipped are all values retrieved from controls on the page.
var query = from orders in dataContext.MyOrdersTable
select orders;
if (orderID.HasValue)
{
query = query.Where(order => order.OrderID == orderID);
}
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(lastName))
{
query = query.Where(order => order.LastName == lastName);
}
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(firstName))
{
query = query.Where(order => order.FirstName == firstName);
}
if (shipped.HasValue)
{
query = query.Where(order => order.Shipped == shipped);
}
myGridView.DataSouce = query;
myGridView.DataBind();
This trigger will write to an archive table when a row is updated or deleted. Very useful when you want to know who did what and when.
USE [DatabaseName]
GO
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
CREATE TRIGGER [dbo].[trigTableName_Archive]
ON [dbo].[TableName]
FOR UPDATE, DELETE
AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
INSERT INTO TableName_ARCHIVE
(Column1,
Column2,
Column3)
SELECT
Column1,
Column2,
Column3
FROM deleted
END
I always seem to be looking this up. So here it is:
USE DatabaseName
GO
ALTER TABLE TableName
ADD CONSTRAINT ConstraintName
UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED (ColumnName)
GO
So the other day while attempting to drag a stored procedure onto the LINQ Designer in Visual Studio I received the following error:
The stored procedure was rather complex including a call to FREETEXT and for some reason the LINQ Designer would not accept it, so I manually mapped the stored procedure for the DataContext. For future reference, here is some sample code:
public partial class MyDataContext
{
[Function(Name = "dbo.MyStoredProc")]
public ISingleResult<MyClass> MyProcName(
[Parameter(Name = "Parameter1")] int? parameter1,
[Parameter(Name = "Parameter2")] ProductCategory? parameter2,
[Parameter(Name = "Parameter3")] bool? parameter3)
{
IExecuteResult result = this.ExecuteMethodCall(this,
((MethodInfo)(MethodInfo.GetCurrentMethod())),
parameter1, parameter2, parameter3);
return ((ISingleResult<MyClass>)(result.ReturnValue));
}
}
Then you can call the stored procedure in code like so:
var results = myDC.MyProcName(parameter1, parameter2, parameter3);