Jan 24
The available official help in using a Sql Server Compact edition in a .Net program is not very extensive. In fact, it does not mention some elemental aspects that you need in order to create a database. This post will show you how to create a new database or connect to an existing one.
I assume you have already downloaded and installed the latest version of the SQL Server Compact edition, and have added a reference to it in your VB.Net project. Also, that you have imported the right namespace (System.Data.SqlServerCe).
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Jan 20
For a customer I placed a SQL server, which has a disk size of about 900 MB, on “cheap” iSCSI SAN with a dual 10 GB link. This was not the only Virtual Machine on the iSCSI hardware there where about 13 LUN defined with each about 6 virtual machines. I “doubted” if” this machine was a candidate for this particular iSCSI solution but measurements of the environment showed me that it was possible.
It seems to went well but after a few days I got complaining users and i saw this graph (see below) ! It seems that something has changed on January the 17th. From that day the SQL server is bean heavily loaded with import jobs that will run every night. Because the customer want to have the latest production data for testing and training the virtual machine characteristic changed dramatically du to this adjustment! 
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Jan 05
Author : Ingmar Verheij
In a previous post I’ve described how you can reverse and forward engineer a database from a Microsoft SQL server to (and from Microsoft Office Visio 2010. But what if you’re using Typed Datasets in Microsoft Visual Studio?
Same as with Visio, reverse engineering an existing database from a SQL database is built-in and therefore fairly easy. So a best-practice is to design the database model in Visio, forward engineer it to a SQL database and import it in Visual Studio.
If you want to forward engineer a Microsoft ADO.NET compatible DataSet Schema File (XSD) to a (Microsoft SQL) database you can use the XSD2DB tool created by Alexsis Smirnov.
In this blog post I will demonstrate how to reverse engineer a database from Microsoft SQL server, and how to forward engineer a XSD back to a Microsoft SQL server.
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Jan 05
Author : Ingmar Verheij
A great built-in feature in Microsoft Office Visio 2010 is the ‘Reverse Engineer’ feature. With this feature you can create a database model from an existing database or a Microsoft Excel worksheet. This makes it very easy to document the structure of a database, redistribute or publish It on Microsoft SharePoint.
Unfortunately Microsoft has removed the ability to forward engineer the database model to a database, which did exist in Microsoft Visio 2003 Enterprise Architect-edition.
Fortunately Alberto Ferrari created an Visio 2010 plugin that can forward engineer an data model to a T-SQL script. The Visio Forward Engineer project is on CodePlex and can be found here.
In this blog post I will demonstrate how to reverse engineer a database from Microsoft SQL server, and how to forward engineer a database model diagram back to a Microsoft SQL server.
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Jan 02
When installing ChangeAuditor form Quest (a next, next finish installation) I received an error when I tried to logon with the client but I did not get any error during or after the installation. I got the following error:
Info","Could not connect to net.tcp://<FQDN>.local:49309/Service. The connection attempt lasted for a time span of 00:00:02.0779654. TCP error code 10061: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it <IPadress>:49309. "
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May 03
I needed to delete around 50 scheduled tasks from several machines in Altiris because something went wrong in on of the first jobs.
It would have better if the jobs were configured to fail on error and not continue but they weren’t.
Deleting the jobs from the Altiris console is very, very, slow. First the console asks for confirmation (after showing the hourglass for a long time):
Then the actual delete can take a few minutes and then the next server and so on.
I decided to delete the tasks directly from SQL.
I know this is not preferred but I think in the end it’s safe enough because I found a stored procedure called del_event_schedule which looks like this:
ALTER procedure
[dbo
].
[del_event_schedule
]
@schedule_id int
AS
begin transaction
DELETE FROM event_schedule WHERE schedule_id = @schedule_id
IF (@@error != 0)
rollback transaction
else
commit transaction
So al it does is a (transacted) delete from the table.
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Apr 29
I am currently deploying 64 Citrix XenApp servers with Altiris. The deployment consists of an OS Image, OS Configuration and finally Citrix XenApp and Applications.
In the OS Configuration part the IP configuration needs to be applied and I decided to do this with a database.
The database consists of 2 tables; one table with the per host settings and one table with the global settings (such as DNS).
In the Altiris job both tables are read from an embedded VBScript and assigned to the NIC.
Database configuration
I created a database (SQL Server) called IPManagement with 2 tables:
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May 08
Exporting data from a SQL database to a XML file is very easy, if you know how to.
Using the bcp command (bulk copy program), a tool supplied by Microsoft, you can easily export all the data you want.
- Create a new text file and type the following text:
<root>
</root>
- Save the text file with a .xml extension, for instance data.xml;
- Open a new Command Prompt (as Administrator in Vista/Win7/2008 R2);
- Execute the following command : bcp.exe “SELECT * FROM Table AS XML RAW” queryout data.xml -c -r -t -T.
If you want to script the process with batch (we’re a big fan of batch files) you can use the following script:
@Echo Off
REM Create an empty XML file
ECHO ^<root^> >data.xml
ECHO ^</root^> >>data.xml
REM Export the data using BCP
bcp.exe "SELECT * FROM Table AS XML RAW" queryout data.xml -c -r -t -T.
Ingmar Verheij & Daniel Nikolic
Jan 16
After spending some time trying to install Microsoft OpsManager and Virtual Machine Manager I got stuck after the installations try to connect the SQL database which was installed on another server in the domain.
It’s really important to open some firewall ports when SQL is installed on a Windows 2008 R2 host.
Create a script on the SQL server and execute it, after that all works like a charm 
@echo ========= SQL Server Ports ===================
@echo Enabling SQLServer default instance port 1433
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 1433 “SQLServer”
@echo Enabling Dedicated Admin Connection port 1434
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 1434 “SQL Admin Connection”
@echo Enabling conventional SQL Server Service Broker port 4022
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 4022 “SQL Service Broker”
@echo Enabling Transact-SQL Debugger/RPC port 135
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 135 “SQL Debugger/RPC”
@echo ========= Analysis Services Ports ==============
@echo Enabling SSAS Default Instance port 2383
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 2383 “Analysis Services”
@echo Enabling SQL Server Browser Service port 2382
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 2382 “SQL Browser”
@echo ========= Misc Applications ==============
@echo Enabling HTTP port 80
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 80 “HTTP”
@echo Enabling SSL port 443
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 443 “SSL”
@echo Enabling port for SQL Server Browser Service’s ‘Browse’ Button
netsh firewall set portopening UDP 1434 “SQL Browser”
@echo Allowing multicast broadcast response on UDP (Browser Service Enumerations OK)
netsh firewall set multicastbroadcastresponse ENABLE
Also see this KB article @ Microsoft support.
Daniel Nikolic
Jan 14
When installing SCCM (SP2) and connecting to a remote SQL 2008 R2 (EE), you can receive an error: ‘Could not connect or execute SQL query’
This happens because of the installation of SQL 2008, which disables the SQL Server Browser service on the SQL server. Reset the server to Automatic and start the service.
After that you have to run the following command on the SCCM server: setspn -A MSSQLSvc/<FQDN of SQL Server> <DomainUser Name>.
Then as final step we must enable the Named Pipes and TCP/IP protocols in the SQL Server Configuration Manager. Open the SQL Server Configuration Manager, go to the SQL Network Configuration, Protocols for MSSQLSERVER and enable the Named Pipes and TCP/IP protocols, restart the SQL Server service and voila.
Daniel Nikolic
The available official help in using a Sql Server Compact edition in a .Net program is not very extensive. In fact, it does not mention some elemental aspects that you need in order to create a database. This post will show you how to create a new database or connect to an existing one.
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