ASP.NET

Leading Spaces in SQL Reporting Services

Kyle — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:29:12 GMT

SQL Reporting Services has a really annoying "feature" that essentially removes all leading spaces from a field, when rendering a report to the ReportViewer control. You cannot use  , You cannot use space(5), etc.

But, if you need to do leading spaces, you can set a formula in the padding field of the cell.

Fantastic!

SQL Reporting Services

Kyle — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:11:30 GMT

50% of my job is Web Development. The other 50% is managing a 2GB SQL database and web app (with about 1500 users). Part of that 50% is writing SQL Reporting reports. Up until the other day, I was having my users log into the web interface of S/RS and get their reports that way. I was talking to some other developers who use the same system, and they said that you can Proxy into reports using code.

I dug into this a little bit, and in about 2 hours, whipped up a little VB.NET page that did the trick. All it needed was a ReportViewer control, a small helper class, and about 3 more lines of code. Of course, I spruced it up a little bit, entering parameters based on Query String variables, etc. But, here's the gist of what I had put together (with a lot of online help.)

1   Imports System.Collections
2   Imports System.ComponentModel
3   Imports System.Data
4   Imports System.Drawing
5   Imports System.Web
6   Imports System.Web.SessionState
7   Imports System.Web.UI
8   Imports System.Web.UI.WebControls
9   Imports System.Web.UI.HtmlControls
10  Imports Microsoft.Web.UI.WebControls
11  Imports System.Net
12  Imports System.Security.Principal
13  Imports Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms
14
15
16  Partial Class _Default
17      Inherits System.Web.UI.Page
18      Public ReadOnly Property ReportServer() As String
19          Get
20              Return "http://reportserver/reportserver"
21          End Get
22      End Property
23
24      Public ReadOnly Property ReportPath()
25          Get
26              Return "/Proxy"
27          End Get
28      End Property
29
30      Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
31
32          If Not ispostback Then
33              ReportViewer1.ServerReport.ReportServerCredentials = _
34                          New MyReportServerCredentials()
35              ReportViewer1.ServerReport.ReportPath = ReportPath & CStr(Request.QueryString("rpt")).Replace("%20", " ")
36              Dim p As New System.Collections.Generic.List(Of Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportParameter)
37
38              'Check to see if the report has a requirement for a person ID.
39              Dim d As Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportParameterInfoCollection = ReportViewer1.ServerReport.GetParameters()
40              Dim di As Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportParameterInfo
41              For Each di In d
42                  If di.Name.ToLower = "calendarid" Then
43                      If Not IsNothing(Request.QueryString("CalendarId")) Then
44                          p.Add(New Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportParameter("CalendarId", Request.QueryString("CalendarId")))
45                      End If
46                  End If
47              Next
48
49              ReportViewer1.ServerReport.SetParameters(p)
50              ReportViewer1.PromptAreaCollapsed = False
51          Else
52              ReportViewer1.PromptAreaCollapsed = True
53          End If
54
55      End Sub
56  End Class
57
58  <Serializable()> _
59  Public NotInheritable Class MyReportServerCredentials
60      Implements IReportServerCredentials
61
62      Public ReadOnly Property ImpersonationUser() As WindowsIdentity _
63              Implements IReportServerCredentials.ImpersonationUser
64          Get
65
66              'Use the default windows user.  Credentials will be
67              'provided by the NetworkCredentials property.
68              Return Nothing
69
70          End Get
71      End Property
72
73      Public ReadOnly Property NetworkCredentials() As ICredentials _
74              Implements IReportServerCredentials.NetworkCredentials
75          Get
76
77              'Read the user information from the web.config file.
78              'By reading the information on demand instead of storing
79              'it, the credentials will not be stored in session,
80              'reducing the vulnerable surface area to the web.config
81              'file, which can be secured with an ACL.
82
83              'User name
84              Dim userName As String = _
85                  ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("MyReportViewerUser")
86
87              If (String.IsNullOrEmpty(userName)) Then
88                  Throw New Exception("Missing user name from web.config file")
89              End If
90
91              'Password
92              Dim password As String = _
93                  ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("MyReportViewerPassword")
94
95              If (String.IsNullOrEmpty(password)) Then
96                  Throw New Exception("Missing password from web.config file")
97              End If
98
99              'Domain
100              Dim domain As String = _
101                  ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("MyReportViewerDomain")
102
103              If (String.IsNullOrEmpty(domain)) Then
104                  Throw New Exception("Missing domain from web.config file")
105              End If
106
107              Return New NetworkCredential(userName, password, domain)
108
109          End Get
110      End Property
111
112      Public Function GetFormsCredentials(ByRef authCookie As Cookie, _
113                                          ByRef userName As String, _
114                                          ByRef password As String, _
115                                          ByRef authority As String) _
116                                          As Boolean _
117              Implements IReportServerCredentials.GetFormsCredentials
118
119          authCookie = Nothing
120          userName = Nothing
121          password = Nothing
122          authority = Nothing
123
124          'Not using form credentials
125          Return False
126
127      End Function
128
129  End Class

A strange thing happened to me on the way to work today...

Kyle — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 18:41:43 GMT

So, I wrote a new web service in a .NET 2.0 app today. Went to fire it up, and I got a wierd message that I had never seen before.

I found a few references to this on the web, but they all dealt with 1.1 stuff.

Then, I went hunting around my web.config to see if there was some way it was trying to emulate 1.1. I ran across this line that I put in when I decided to mess around with AXAX.NET.

Whoops. I had inadvertently disabled my web services...

Yeah. Don't do that.

IIS Performance

Kyle — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 01:03:00 GMT

Question for the masses...

What is a reasonable expectation for IIS performance in terms of pages it can serve per hour?

It seems that 20,000 an hour is not an unreasonable expectation.

4 Processor Machine with 2 GB of RAM
10,000 RPM HDD's
Server 2003
SQL Server 2000
ASP.NET 1.1/2.0

Does anyone have any benchmarks for performance on something similar?

Thanks,

K-

SQL 2000 & SQL 2005 Side By Side...

Kyle — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 19:17:00 GMT

I'm stumped.

I've got an instance of SQL 2000 (staging\staging2000) running on a box side-by-side just fine with an instance of SQL 2005. When I'm working in Visual Studio on the staging box, it works just fine. I connect and get into the 2000 instance of the database with no problems.

As soon as I move over to my laptop (same configuration), I get ...

An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server)

My connection string is calling the SQL 2000 instance properly (as far as I know).

server=staging\staging2000;initial catalog=xxxxx;uid=xxxxx;password=xxxxx;

The .net connector is apparently trying to connect to the 2005 instance. I'm stumped. Anyone have any suggestions?

New to Ajax? Read this...

Kyle — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 13:25:00 GMT

Recently, I've run across several posts over at the AJAX.NET Google Group asking about how you can bind a DataGrid, or a Repeater using AJAX.

The answer is, you can't.

DataGrids and Repeaters are Server Side controls. Their life begins and ends on the server, when the page is rendered to the client. The client is rendered to HTML, and sent to the client. That's it. Finito. The End. That's all she wrote. From there on out, it's all the client.

Any AJAX transactions that take place must be rendered on the client using JavaScript. It's that simple. Server Controls are for the server. Asynchronous JAVASCRIPT and XML. No mention of server controls in the name. So, if you bring back a collection of Data from the server, you need to parse through that data with JavaScript, and create your HTML manually. No way around it. (Well, there is, but it can severely limit functionality).

The other issue is Page Context. You don't get one when you're doing an AJAX call on the server. It's an HTTP Request. No page context. With the AJAX.NET library, you get the session and cookies, etc, but the page doesn't exist. No way around that. Even if you could get the page context, it's only valid when the script is running on the server. You can't re-bind data to an existing datagrid.

So, Server Controls are for the Server. Any work done with AJAX is Client Side.

AMF.NET

Kyle — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:47:00 GMT

Seems Karl is working on a new project, and has been since the beginning of the year. AMF.NET is an open-source alternative to Flash Remoting.

Excellent. Remoting is way too expensive. $999 per server, MacrAdobe, come on.

Anyway. Karl is on to something.

The same can be done with web services, without the HTTP Handler.

I'll post some code soon...

HttpHandler for Image Resizing

Kyle — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 23:48:00 GMT

Is using an HttpHandler for image resizing the best way to go?

If I have a site that gets a ton of hits, will the server be constantly pegged resizing all those images?

Anyone have any experience, advice to offer a HttpHandler newbie?

Cache Crazy

Kyle — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 07:24:00 GMT

I know it's probably not "best design" to go Cache Crazy, and cache everything under the sun. But, for a lot of things it makes sense. For data that changes often, it may not be worth it. It's possible that every time you cache something that changes often, you'll just be hitting the database again to cache the new data. I say, if you've got the memory, go for it.

Second comment. It's important to remember all the ways in which you're caching the data. For example, I'm not only caching individual rows from the database which are represented as classes, but I'm caching the collections of the rows as well. That way, when there's a search, etc, the database isn't being so stressed out. I just have to remember where (and when) I'm caching all these objects. So, when one element in the collection changes, I can refresh it.

Multiple Content Place Holders on Single Master Page

Kyle — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 20:15:00 GMT

As it turns out, it is possible to have multiple content areas on a single master page.

Master Page:

1 <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="ContentPlaceHolder1" runat="Server"></asp:ContentPlaceHolder>
2 <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="ContentPlaceHolder2" runat="Server"></asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

Content Page:

1 <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder1" runat="Server"></asp:Content>
2 <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder2" Runat="Server"></asp:Content>