Author: way0utwest

I hope there will be more surveys, so I’ll tag this as 2010. The results were released recently, and there were some write-ups on the results. There was the release by PASS, and then a great interpretation (and debate) by Brent Ozar. There are others as well (Brian Kelley, Jack Corbett, Tom LaRock).

The survey was flawed, but aren’t they all? I’m sure PASS would like help in getting another one together, and they have asked. Feel free to contact them with feedback.

However. (you knew that was coming, right?)

There’s an interpretation missing. Why don’t we have an official interpretation of the results from PASS? Why hasn’t the board published something that explains how they viewed the results? Shouldn’t at least a couple of the board members have spent time going over the results by now?

There’s a write-up on the PASS blog on the chapter survey (thanks, Douglas). Transparency was on the last Board agenda in March. People have called for more transparency and communication. There’s a short announcement, but no feedback from board members on how they view the survey.

It’s our fault. We get what we allow, and a few of us make some noise about this, but it’s not enough of you out there that contact PASS and let the board know what you’d like. Too many people sit back and just let PASS happen, or in this case, do very little.

PASS can be a great organization for helping the SQL Server community grow, bond, learn, and become stronger. However it takes a little effort from all of you.

If you read this, take 5 minutes and draft a short email to the PASS board. Ask them to blog, ask them for their interpretation, tell them they’re doing a great job.

Are SQL Saturdays falling from the sky? (from Jen McCown, @midnightDBA)
I think so. This past weekend had three events, #39 in NYC, #41 in Atlanta, and #44 in Huntington Beach, CA. That’s unusual, but this weekend we have #36 in Wheeling, WV and #38 in Jacksonville next weekend, then two more in May (#35 Dallas and #27 Portland). That’s 7 events in 30 days, which is amazing. Extrapolate that for the year and you would be looking at 84 events in a year!
That. Is. Amazing.
When Andy (blog | Twitter) and I talked about this three years ago, we were thinking that getting 12 events would be great, and we hoped we could get to the point where we might do 50 in a year.
It looks like that could happen, and I’m hoping PASS continues to push for it. There are, as of now, 23 events scheduled for 2010, and a few more in the works (Denver and Nashville that I know of).
I think it’s cool, and I’m glad to be a part of them. I have plans to hit two more this year, Pensacola and Baton Rouge, and might do another if I can.

This is one of the reasons that I don’t like to put CTP software (or Beta software) onto machines that I can’t take the time to wipe and rebuild. Buck Woody wrote a note about upgrading your CTP, and the short answer in his blog is:

NO

You can’t upgrade a CTP and it’s not supported. Well, maybe you can upgrade a CTP, but it’s a bad idea. There could be settings, registry entries, etc. that get stuck from the CTP into the RTM, and it might bite you later.

I don’t think it’s worth the risk. Honestly SQL Server is easy to detach dbs, script logins, uninstall, reinstall, fix it up. It’s a simple process, even if you have jobs, so I wouldn’t complain about it, wouldn’t chance it, and just rebuild the SQL instance.

Here’s what I’d do if you don’t want to rebuild Windows

1. Perform a physical to virtual migration using Hyper-V. This will give you a backup.
2. Script out logins, jobs, save packages on the file system. If you have linked servers, do those as well. I might do a complete script of the server if you can.
3. Detach the user databases.
4. Uninstall SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP (or whatever version). Make sure you get all Control Panel SQL Server entries.
5. Delete the registry keys that might exist.
6. If the user databases are in default locations, move them. Delete the folders from the file system.
7. Reboot
8. Reinstall SQL Server
9. Attach databases.
10. Run scripts to add logins, jobs, etc. Fix orphaned users.
11. Test, test, test,

Easy-peasy

I installed a new VM with SQL Server in it, along with Win 7 and Reporting Services. The plan was to mess with this as a detailed journey through to learning more about SSRS this year.

I was excited to get going on this new install since I hadn’t messed with SSRS much since 2005, and then on one of our test servers for SQLServerCentral. So I fired it up, having run through the installation defaults and browsed to the Report Manager to get:

Seriously? No IIS on a default install, and SS2K8 SSRS shouldn’t require it. I’m an admin on my own box, so what’s the deal. Actually this is a Firefox issue that requires that I clean up a few things and store off the name password.

However, once that was done, I connected and found a blank report manager screen. That was very, very annoying.

At first I was fairly torque’d. After all, this is a dev setup that’s common, and having stuff not work like this really doesn’t do the SSRS brand much good in the eyes of developers.

Now I’m not on a domain, I’m standalone, which is likely not common. It’s also probably that the DBA sets up SSRS on the server and developers connect, but I think lots of them have local instances to test reports against.

So what do I do? I dug around the Internet and found a lot of fragmented advice. The big one was that I needed to setup roles for SSRS, but I had to use Report Manager to do that. And as you can see above, there’s no “Properties” tab above. The final advice that seemed to work for me was a need to log in as administrator. Not an administrator, but as administrator itself.

How do you do that in Vista or Win 7? Administrator is buried on those OSes, and for good reason. Otherwise people would likely use it all the time. I tried running IE as Administrator, but that didn’t work. That was one of the first suggestions I’d see, so I had to log into the machine itself. To do that, first you need an administrative command prompt.

Then you run this: “net use administrator /active:yes”

When you then do a “switch user” and get the login screen, the administrative account is visible. I logged into that, connected to Report Manager, and added my account as a content owner and publisher.

Back to my account and I’m golden. I can now see my main screen.

I’m not sure why the IE-as-administrator did not work, but if it fails for you, this should help.