Arthur Zubarev

Request for the permission of type 'System.Data.SqlClient.SqlClientPermission failed Error

Compudicted — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:09:18 GMT

After some time working on another SQL CLR I am getting an error

Request for the permission of type 'System.Data.SqlClient.SqlClientPermission, System.Data, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=' failed.

This procedure needed to access a stored procedure on a remote server. Running that stored procedure within SQL Server Management Studio completed successfully. It just would not execute from my SQL CLR !

Doing online research did not lead to a solution.

Nearly completely tired I dropped by my DBA with this issue who decided to add SQL Account of the target SQL Server to the SQL Server box I was running this stored procedure on and bum no more issue !

CREATE ASSEMBLY Failed Error

Compudicted — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:59:22 GMT

I was doing some new CLR Stored Procedures in SQL Server 2005 and at a certain point received error:

CREATE ASSEMBLY failed because method 'MyMethod' on type 'StoredProcedures'
in safe assembly 'MyAssembly' is storing to a static field. Storing to a static field is not allowed in safe assemblies.

Interestingly, despite all the procedures inside SQL CLR stored procedures have to be declared as static, no static fields are allowed outside them. So in my case declaring a static variable outside SqlProcedure.

[Microsoft.SqlServer.Server.SqlProcedure]

attribute caused this error.

So if you really want to share state outside stored procedures using SQL Server 2005 you will need to be creative.

In SQL Server 2008 this can be done using table variables.

Let's Jaiku!

Compudicted — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:56:33 GMT

Everyone knows what Twitter is today. Has anybody heard of Jaiku? Well, me neither, until today!

Apparently Twitter got competition. My cursory look revealed that Jaiku is more feature reach and options laden than Twitter.

Jaiku is operated by Google, so if you already have GMail getting in contact with your friends is a breeze. Additionally, anyone can operate its engine (JaikuEngine) and it is Open Source (sweet)! Go to http://tinyurl.com/awkpcf for more info.

Just go and explore it or join me on Jaiku http://arthurz.jaiku.com/

Cheers!

The Adorable HippoEdit

Compudicted — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:58:30 GMT

The Adorable HippoEdit

Not so long time ago, just out of my curiosity, I downloaded off Giveaway of the Day an new editor called HippoEdit for me to experiment.

Besides, I am always on the look for new tools and utilities, and it will be needless to say I like all kind of software especially that gives me a fresh, new look at the old things. Some stay with me forever and some I let go sooner or later. But I feel every program or application contributed something, at times it could be good design I may recall about when implementing something for my job.

Frankly, I was mostly driven by desire to replace one or more of my old friends - editors I was not satisfied with any more, and believe me, a have accumulated more than a few. So my criteria were very tough to pass.

To my astonishment HippoEdit was sharp from the day its cute smiley icon appeared on my desktop!

Well, my first and the strongest impression to date - it is the smartest, most extendible and fun to use editor.

Here I will tell you why:

Despite its icon's jolly image and look do not let yourself be fooled - HippoEdit is extremely powerful.

Its main target audience is software developers and database administrators with support to most modern and even rare programming languages, to name a few, and I think I have not seen any editor for MS Windows with support for ABAP, Pascal, Cobol, etc. I am no talking about code folding, project support, a very neat syntax highlighting, custom code templates, colored file tabs, 2 way bookmarking system, RegEx searches, seamless web browsing, external tools support, a powerful search engine, support for various encoding and lots more, all in all, to me, it blows most free and many other commercial editors.

Here is how HippoEdit editing session looks like on my laptop:

I would encourage you to take it for a test drive!

The HippoEdit has an active forum where anyone can contribute to the Editor or ask a question.

The moderators are very knowledgeable, polite and always reply in nearly no time .

I have several suggestions to the creators and strongly believe features as Spell Checker and a Macro Engine are a must for today's Editor and they will appear soon.

Launching an Arbitrary VBScript From Within MSI Package

Compudicted — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:11:36 GMT

Recently I was given a task of building an MSI package that among other things needed to include a VBScript in it. The VBScript would run at the end of the installation process.
Because I used to build install packages on and off in the past that also included various VBScripts I did not think twice, simply rolled up my sleeves and started a new Setup project in Visual Studio.
While doing an initial build I noticed that it is not so easy to incorporate some advanced features into the project as chaining other MSI packages, starting and stopping services, creating environmental variables, etc.
Finally, to my disappointment, I could not get the VBScript executed at the end of my installation package!
An error about VBScript not being able to run popped up.
What a surprise, I was tempted to blame the Visual Studio for that failure and simply decided to switch to another install tool to try.
Although this time I wanted the luxury of having a tool easy to work with that would have the features I needed and also flexible enough. After some digging into the Internet I was able to find an excellent alternative from wItem Installer2Go.
Alas, after building an MSI package this time five times as fast with it I received the same result. The script would not run!
I started to suspect something is wrong with my script and did the installation with logging turned on via command line.
Well, the error was there it was can’t create object: WScript.Shell Hmm, I puzzled for a moment and scratched my head, I was sure I had successfully deployed several MSIs with a VBScript in them before.
After some research the issue became evident: You cannot use the WScript object in scripts that are called by MSIExec.
An excellent article is this at SpinnerSoftware or a discussion thread on the Microsoft's Communities website.
This does make sense to me, one cannot have a handle to WSH from MSI.
Well, ~~the only~~ positive outcome is I now have a very nice Installer at hand I will be using.

Update: Justed used another approach and it works. You can instead create an executable off the same, slightly modified VBScript (only a Sub Main procedure needs to be added), the tool I used is a freeware ScriptPad.

Forcing MSI Installation Into a Specific Directory

Compudicted — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:31:19 GMT

Yesterday I was doing an upgrade to a product and I needed to install it into the path where the old version used to be. I only needed to figure out what install option I need.

I knew MS Installer supports a vast number of command line options, I hoped that it will be easy to find the correct one, but looking into the MSDN’s help did not help finding the necessary Public Property right away, it simply was not immediately obvious.

So I tried one property then another and finally in frustration decided to turn on the logging to see what the MSI package is doing when I change the default destination path.

Examining the produced file immediately yielded results – bingo, the right property was very evident, buried in the middle of my install log - TARGETDIR. The rest was easy:

I created a custom command line install directive

msiexec /passive TARGETDIR="C:\MyTagretDirectory" /i MyProject.msi

And was able to get the desired path pre-populated!

In my case I did not want the user to interact with the installer and therefore added the /passive option which reduces the MS Installer GUI to merely a progress bar.

Hot To Properly Schedule a Job on Windows

Compudicted — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:33:46 GMT

I needed to automate creation of a job last night on a Windows computer. I was able to find examples of such a script, but realized that they lack a very important part - the ability to schedule a job taking into consideration the Time Zone the computer is in. This is important as the VBScript needs the time zone offset to schedule the script accurately. For people residing in different time zones the offset value will be different and this is also a factor for scheduling a job on computers in different time zones. I thought why not to overcome this limitation and make scheduling jobs easier? I was able to craft such a script. I think the time zone alignment is a necessary part of any job scheduling script. The code is below:

'Purpose: Schedule a Windows Scheduler Task
'Notes..: The script is capable of adjusting itself to the time zone of the computer

Dim offset
Dim strComputer
Dim errJobCreated

'Use local machine
strComputer = "."
For Each os In GetObject("winmgmts:").InstancesOf ("Win32_OperatingSystem")
offset = CStr(os.CurrentTimeZone)
Next

'Schedule notepad to run at 12:30 pm every other work day
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Set objNewJob = objWMIService.Get("Win32_ScheduledJob")

errJobCreated = objNewJob.Create _
    ("Notepad.exe", "********123000.000000" & offset , _
        True , 1 OR 4 OR 16, , , JobID)

If errJobCreated = 0 Then
Wscript.Echo "Scheduled task has been successfully created."
Else
Wscript.Echo "New scheduled task creation has FAILED!."
End IF

SQL Server 2008 RTM First Impressions

Compudicted — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:32:47 GMT

I have decided to continue my article on the SQL Server 2008 RTM exploration update 3 in form of a new post.

I am up and running with the SQL Server 2008 with no issues.

The SQL Server Configuration Manager is a nice replacement for Surface Area Configuration and SQL Browser and it needs little attention. I spent literally 2 minutes just glancing at the settings. Nothing much to change.

Among the new things are SSMS enhancements like the built in ability to debug T-SQL be it a stored procedure or just a SQL Statement, very nice.

Another feature I liked is the ability to edit data directly:

SSMS allows you to only get first 200 rows. The feature became tricky when I needed to edit 10 specific rows. I have resolve this riddle by right-clicking on the status bar after I obtain the first 200 rows. It brings you a menu where you can choose to have the SQL editor pane for example where you can fine tune your query, see picture below:

This works unlike the command Select First 1000 Rows where you get the SQL editor right away ready to accept your modifications.

So far so good, my next posting will be encrypting databases.

Top 10 source code search engines

Compudicted — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 04:24:54 GMT

I have came across something very useful via StumbleUpon for software developers:
Top 10 source code search engines
http://www.cavdar.net/2008/08/01/my-top-10-source-code-search-engines/

I have decided to give an update to my article after I read a new related posting by Scott Hanselman.

Enjoy!

SQL Server 2008 Released Today - Update 2

Compudicted — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:42:49 GMT

An RTM of MS SQL Server 2008 has finally been released today!

Being an MCITP in SQL Server I will definitely give it a try especially when Microsoft is so nice with providing a free 180 Enterprise evaluation version that you can find here: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/trial-software.aspx

I will be trying out first the data encryption capabilities.

Update 1:

The download come as an image, and It took quite a while to set the things up as I decided to try it on a non production machine first because the installer prompted me to get the .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 that is known for several bugs that may need attention; a good, though a small summary on the bugs is here.

I have just finished installing the SQL Server up. Overall I can see huge improvements in the way the installer is designed, it is very user friendly.

Update 2:

I had zero issues installing and configuring the SQL Server 2008 default instance on my test Intel Quad Core Vista machine.

This is unlike some other people who reported hardware issues and other hurdles. Reading some blogs I found people had difficulties mostly getting the SQL Server 2008 sample databases, so to this regard I recommend William Vaughan's blog.

My personal experience was not as painful getting the sample databases because while installing them (running a sample database installer) I copied the path where the installer wanted to place the databases to. Sure I was surprised to not to see the .mdb file for the AdventureWorks (naturally I was expecting to just attach the database), so fiddling around within the directories the installer created I found AdventureWorks2008.bak file in .\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Samples - voila! Next my DBA's hand reached out to SSMS and restored it in under 1 min. I guess, this is good to know if one messes up the database and needs to restore the pristine instance.

I am ready to rock-n-roll!

Update 3 to follow.