Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Changing what browser Visual Studio 2010 uses

You know what I love about the Internets? You can find a fix for daggone near anything that ails you.

For example, from the developer's website:

World of VS Default Browser Switcher

Currently it is a bit of a pain (as in “too many clicks” and sometimes non-visible options) to change the browser used by VS when you’re developing and testing your website.

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/bb424812-f742-41ef-974a-cdac607df921/

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Making an org chart from Exchange, part 4

So, I want to build a simple report to draw out my org chart from Outlook / Exchange / Active Directory. To do that, I outlined a pretty straightforward data table:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[reportsto](
[ID] [varchar](1000) NULL,
[pname] [varchar](1000) NULL,
[pmanager] [varchar](1000) NULL,
[paddress] [varchar](1000) NULL,
[INSERTED] [datetime] NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]

I then wrote a script to draw down various entities from Active Directory to my local SQL Server. You can simulate what data I got with the following inserts:


insert into dbo.reportsto(pname,paddress,pmanager,pmid) values ('test person 1', '123 Main Street', '',null);
insert into dbo.reportsto(pname,paddress,pmanager,pmid) values ('test person 2', '123 Main Street', 'test person 1',(select pid from dbo.reportsto where pname = 'test person 1'));
insert into dbo.reportsto(pname,paddress,pmanager,pmid) values ('test person 3', '123 Main Street', 'test person 1',(select pid from dbo.reportsto where pname = 'test person 1'));
insert into dbo.reportsto(pname,paddress,pmanager,pmid) values ('test person 4', '123 Main Street', 'test person 2',(select pid from dbo.reportsto where pname = 'test person 2'));
insert into dbo.reportsto(pname,paddress,pmanager,pmid) values ('test person 5', '123 Main Street', 'test person 2',(select pid from dbo.reportsto where pname = 'test person 2'));
insert into dbo.reportsto(pname,paddress,pmanager,pmid) values ('test person 6', '123 Main Street', 'test person 2',(select pid from dbo.reportsto where pname = 'test person 2'));
insert into dbo.reportsto(pname,paddress,pmanager,pmid) values ('test person 7', '123 Main Street', 'test person 2',(select pid from dbo.reportsto where pname = 'test person 2'));
insert into dbo.reportsto(pname,paddress,pmanager,pmid) values ('test person 8', '123 Main Street', 'test person 2',(select pid from dbo.reportsto where pname = 'test person 2'));
insert into dbo.reportsto(pname,paddress,pmanager,pmid) values ('test person 9', '123 Main Street', 'test person 2',(select pid from dbo.reportsto where pname = 'test person 2'));
insert into dbo.reportsto(pname,paddress,pmanager,pmid) values ('test person 10', '123 Main Street', 'test person 3',(select pid from dbo.reportsto where pname = 'test person 3'));

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Making an org chart from Exchange, part 3

Creating a new SQL Server reporting services DB - writing your first report will come quick enough after you setup the server.

Creating your first report in Reporting Services can be rather... interesting... if you haven't done the the necessary config first. To get Reporting Services up and running, you have to make sure you have run the configuration tool.

Note that I'm assuming you've already run the SQL Server setup program and have IIS installed.

I'm running SQL Server 2008 R2, so it's Start >> All Programs >> SQL Server 2008 R2 >> Configuration Tools >> Reporting Services Configuration Manager

You'll get the popup window labelled "Reporting Services Configuration Connection"... quite the mouthful, and just put in your server \ instance name, and click ok.

You can click through the various tabs on the left. I found that during my setup, the reporting database wasn't installed for whatever reason. I went to the Database tab, and clicked the "Change Database" button. I was able to create a new reporting server database from the wizard, and then that was it.