Another BI & Programming Blog - Jason Yousef

Just a quick post on an error that I got today...     Msg 8501, Level 16, State 3, Line 3 MSDTC on server 'ODCLG29' is unavailable.     That means the "Distributed Transaction Coordinator" service is not running.   ways to get to it...   Type "services.msc" in the run or search command. or go to Control Panel --> administrative tools ---> Services     look for Distributed Transaction Coordinator, you may double click to start it or right click and select start.     You may further read about it here... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd337629(v=ws.10).aspx    

A recent question about how to skip a failure inside a Foreach Loop Container , I'm sharing the answer as it's easy and apparently not everybody is aware of it. So let's assume it's only a simple Foreach Loop Container  that's looping over a files on a network location or even the local disk, getting the file names into a variable and passing it to a file system task to move these files over to another location. The first step will be by creating an OnError event handler for the file system task, and what I mean by that is just click on Event Handlers from the top and then click on the BLUE link in the event handlers and that's it :)   Then look under system variables in the variables window, find the "Propagate" variable and set it to false. So now The Foreach Loop Container is not aware that the file system task has failed therefore does not cause the container to fail and exit. OPTIONAL--you can use the failure P...

Today I got the normal windows update notification in my tool bar, and was surprised that it's showing Skype as an Important Update! I searched for the KB number and found out that's it's now part of windows updates! http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2692954  

It’s T-SQL Tuesday time again, and this time it's about Trick Shots, my trick today is using SSRS to accept user input! Of course it’s not the best way to use SSRS as it’s a presentation layer and so limited in doing that using Parameters and sub-Reports which will fire a code or a stored procedure to update or delete a record…but IT COULD BE DONE!! The Trick: 1-I started by creating a new project in VS 2008, “Report Server Project” type. 2-I’m using SQL 2008 R2 as my testing platform…I’ve created a test DB called “Admin” CREATE DATABASE [Admin] 3-I created a test table called “Employees” contains only 3 columns. Create TABLE Employees ( ID int IDENTITY (1,1), Name varchar(50), Comments varchar(MAX) ) 4- Inserted 4 test records… Insert Employees VALUES('Jason', 'Lazy Employee') ,('Yousef', NULL) ,('John', 'Anything Goes') ,('Smith', NULL) 5-back to VS, Crea...

This is fairly easy and simple, the requirement is to loop over a folder full of .sql files, that has some queries and run them on the server! This could be a stress testing queries, create multiple object or drop and recreate indexes queries as in my actual requirement. We'll need a "For EachLoop container "to iterate over the folder, read the files' location into a STRING variable. Add a "Execute SQL Task" inside the container, setup the SQL server connection, then setup the query to be from a file connection. create the file connection, pointing to one of the files. set the delay validation to true, then setup an expression over the Connection String property. That's it!! The package can be downloaded at: https://www.box.com/s/928b2f993c819b64dd53 Hope that helps someone...

Quick and easy, but I see people in forums are asking about it... You may download the .MDF file from here: http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/releases/view/55330 I'd typically download and save it with the rest of the data files, maybe at the default location or any other drive if you prefer. The default location would be: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA Then, right click on your DATABASES under your server name and select ATTACH Then you'll get the following screen, where you would normally navigate to the download directory and select the advntureworks2012.mdf file. After you click on OK, you will see that the log file is missing and SQL server will display "Not Found", just highlight the log file and click on remove, then OK. You're done!! attached ans ready for testing...

I've always thinking about a contact form for my blog, and blogger.com doesn't offer it or it's only me whom can't find it! Anyway I've discovered this site https://www.emailmeform.com  they give you free forms directly to your E-mail based on templates or your customized form. Just hop to their web site, click on "FREE SIGNUP", fill the form and you'll be ready. The free account gives you the ability to create up to 5 forms and 200 submission a month limit, and you could use the CAPTCHA Verification for spam prevention. After you sign-up and create your form, grab the code as shown below and paste it into a new page into your blogger blog... and you're done...now you'll have a nice way to interact with your readers. http://www.jasonyousef.com/p/contact.html