General Meeting Information

• Date: Monday, July 6, 2009
• Time: 7:00 PM
• Location: Merkle located at 7001 Columbia Gateway Drive, Columbia, MD 21046
• Directions: Visit this MapQuest link for directions
• RSVP: Please email Ray Barley (raymondbarley@gmail.com) if you are attending so we can plan appropriately
• Web site: http://www.bssug.org/

Presentation Information

• Title: SQL Server Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0
• Speaker: Craig Guyer of Microsoft
• Abstract: Authoring reports for SQL Server Reporting Services is even easier than before using the new stand-alone application Report Builder 2.0 (RB2). In this session we will walk through creating some basic reports, show how RB2 fits in with other report authoring applications, and discuss other new report authoring features in SQL Server 2008.

When we released our new system back in February we got most of our users printing with minimal support.  We encouraged all of them to upgrade to IE 7 (many were still using IE6) which did fine with the control.  Shortly after our launch Microsoft started rolling out IE8 and our users slowly started upgrading.

That’s when we found many of them having issues printing.  As you’ll see in this screen shot, they would simply get a generic error when clicking the print button, even after successfully installing the print control.  As a work around we were having folks export to PDF and then print from there.  Obviously this wasn’t an ideal solution and we started troubleshooting to figure out what the problem was.

After doing some testing on our end on virtual machines we were able to reproduce the problem and narrowed it down to Windows Vista running IE8.  Since we weren’t able to resolve the problem on our virtual machine configuration with anything we tried we eventually opened a support ticket with Microsoft.

After some support calls with Microsoft they informed us that in order for this to work properly you have to add the site that’s using the report viewer control as a trusted site if you’re using Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Vista. We thought this was odd because we definitely had tried this on our virtual machine setup and didn’t have any luck.

What we found out on our own later was that as that this solution does not seem to help if you originally started out with a Beta or RC (Release Candidate) copy of IE8 that had been upgraded to the final release.  That was the scenario we had on our virtual machine that we were using to test IE8 and even the trusted site fix didn’t help in that scenario.

So, if you are having this problem and you’re using a clean install of IE8 or an upgrade to the final release of IE8 from a previous version adding the trusted site to fix this problem is easy.

Just open up IE and click Tools > Internet Options and follow the steps shown here in the screen shot to add your site as a trusted site:

Restart your browser and you’re in business.

Now if they could only get away from Active-X so our users that decide not to use IE can print.

We’ve had an open support ticket with Microsoft due to some bugs we’re seeing with SQL Server Reporting Services 2008.  After Microsoft saying that the Update Pack 4 for SQL Server 2008 (released back in mid-March) would fix our problems, they sent us an email this week letting us know that the final version of Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2008 would be released yesterday, March 31, 2009.

Unfortunately so far the links they’ve provided don’t go anywhere.  I’ll be checking these links through the day and the rest of the week and will post any further updates if I actually do find the “real” links.

—

According to our internal document, below is the information about SP1:

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1

Release date: March 31, 2009

How to obtain

To obtain SQL Server 2008 SP1, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=66ab3dbb-bf3e-4f46-9559-ccc6a4f9dc19

To obtain Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack, April 2009, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b33d2c78-1059-4ce2-b80d-2343c099bcb4

To obtain Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express Edition SP1, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=01af61e6-2f63-4291-bcad-fd500f6027ff

It should be released on March 31, 2009.

Per Microsoft:

A supported cumulative update package is now available from Microsoft. However, it is intended to correct only the problems that are described in this article. Apply it only to systems that are experiencing these specific problems. This cumulative update package may receive additional testing. Therefore, if you are not severely affected by any of these problems, we recommend that you wait for the next SQL Server 2008 service pack that contains the hotfixes in this cumulative update package.

After scanning down the list it seems that we could benefit from at least two or three fixes listed:

• FIX: You may encounter a deadlock scenario when you use table variables in SQL Server 2005 or in SQL Server 2008
• FIX: When you use a ReportViewer control to view a SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services report that contains two pages, the formatting for the second page is lost
• FIX: When you print a report by using the SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Client-Side Printing functionality, the spacing is too small or too large

I would probably take Microsoft’s advice and hold off installing this update if you’re not specifically seeing any of the issues mentioned in the fix list.

You can download Cumulative update package 3 for SQL Server 2008 here.

General

• SQL Server Central – Scripts with tag Index Management
• SQL Server Performance Tuning Tips
• SQL Server queries with DMVs for examining bottlenecks
• General Tips on Optimizing SQL Server Indexes

Missing Indexes

• The Ultimate Missing Index Finder
• Using SQL Server DMVs to Identify Missing Indexes
• Using Missing Index Information to Write CREATE INDEX Statements
• Limitations of the Missing Indexes Feature
• sys.dm_db_missing_index_group_stats – Returns summary information about groups of missing indexes, excluding spatial indexes
• Are you using SQL’s Missing Index DMVs?

Duplicate Indexes

• The Ultimate Duplicate Index Finder
• Avoid Index Redundancy in SQL Server Tables

Unused Indexes/Index Usage

• The Ultimate Index Usage Reporter
• Deeper insight into unused indexes for SQL Server
• Using SQL Server DMVs to Identify Missing Indexes
• Finding a better candidate for your clustered indexes
• Index with Included Columns
• The Ultimate Index Lister (Pivoted)
• Find Unused Indexes of Current Database

Re-indexing

• ReIndexing Database Tables and Update Statistics on Tables

Inefficient Queries

• Find Longest Running Queries

Performance Counters

• SQL Server Database Specific Performance Counters
• Introduction to Three Important Performance Counters

Performance Data Collector

• SQL Server 2008: Performance Data Collector

Database Engine Tuning Advisor

• Database Engine Tuning Advisor Tutorial

Updating Statistics

• Execute UPDATE STATISTICS for all SQL Server Databases

Deadlocks

• How to Track Down Deadlocks Using SQL Server Profiler
• Diagnosing Deadlocks in SQL Server 2005
• Deadlocked!

The specific JavaScript error was:

Microsoft JScript runtime error: ‘this._postBackSettings.async’ is null or not an object

My page was setup where I had a master page with an AJAX menu on it (Radmenu to be specific).  In order to use the Radmenu you need a ScriptManager object.  Other than the menu, I didn’t have any AJAX related controls on either the master page or the content page.

What I eventually figured out was that my report pages (which use a base class) needed to disable partial rendering.  To do this, you must do it in your page’s init event.  If you do it after the init you’ll get an invalid operation exception.  Here’s the code in the base class (you can put this in your code behind if you’re not using a base class):

    Private Sub Page_Init1(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Init
 
        ' Make sure this page has a master page
        If Not IsNothing(Me.Master) Then
 
            Dim masterScriptManager As ScriptManager
            masterScriptManager = CType(Master.FindControl("MasterScriptManager"), ScriptManager)
 
            ' Make sure our master page has the script manager we're looking for
            If Not IsNothing(masterScriptManager) Then
 
                ' Turn off partial page postbacks for this page
                masterScriptManager.EnablePartialRendering = False
            End If
 
        End If
 
    End Sub

Just in case others stumble across this and are trying to solve their problem, here are some of the links I landed on when trying to solve the problem:

• ASP.NET Forum Post 1
• ASP.NET Forum Post 2
• Blog Post 1
• StackOverflow question

One thing I stumbled across was a warning users to wait for Visual Studio.NET 2008 SP1 to be released BEFORE upgrading to the RTM version of SQL Server 2008.  This blog post cites compatibility problems if you don’t have SP1 installed before working with the RTM version of SQL. What I’m not sure about is if this applies to people using beta versions of SQL Server 2008 (RC0), Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .NET Framework v3.5 SP1 like I am.  This uncertainty made me think that it may be best to wait for the final release of SP1 for VS.NET and the 3.5 Framework.

I then came across a nugget here that said:

well….there’s a…ahem…NDA about this topic…but SQL Server 2008 RTM ships with a RTM version of the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 bits…i’ll let you connect the dots.

I guess it’s time to dig around in the RTM version of SQL 2008 to see if it’s there.  I also wonder if it’s safe to install over top of my RC0 version of if I should remove RC0 before installing the RTM version.  I guess I’ll have to Google more to see what’s required.  I’ll provide updates as I find answers and get upgraded.

**** Update:

According to the release notes the beta SP1 isn’t an acceptable solution.  And since they’re saying SP1 will be officially released next week anyways, it makes sense just to wait for that I think.