Thursday, February 18, 2010

Missing ODBC System DSN Connections

So today at work, we ran into a problem with System DSNs just walking off of some computers.  After checking out the interwebs, I came across some forum posts covering the issue.  Here's what we had to do to restore the System DSNs that went missing:

Open up regedit and browse to
HKLM\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBC.INI
Then look for ODBC Data Sources key... if it's not there, that's what your problem is.
Recreate the ODBC Data Sources key then add Strings for each of the ODBC connections that is showing under the ODBC.INI key.  You will have to assign the driver name to each of the Strings you just created.  For example, I created a TESTDB String (which is also a key under ODBC.INI) in the ODBC.INI key.  Then the value I assigned to it was SQL Server.  The SQL Server value is the driver name.  The driver names can be found under the ODBCINST.INI key right below ODBC.INI.

Adding Parameters to the Report Title in SSRS 2005

So in SSRS 2005 I needed to add my parameters to my report title.  In Crystal Reports it was pretty simple, just drag and drop the parameter into the report title and it would do the work for me.  In SSRS I needed to build an expression.

So click on the Report Title and in the Properties, click on Value and the option.  In the expression type something like this:

="Report on Stuff between" + Parameters!Start_Date.Value + " and " + Parameters!End_Date.Value

If my Start Date was 02/01/2010 and End Date was 02/18/2010 the report title would be:

Report on Stuff between 02/01/2010 and 02/18/2010


Works great once I learned how to do it.

Changing the default locations for SQL Server Studio 2005 and BIDS 2005...

I wanted to change my default location for SQL Server Studio 2005 and BIDS (Business Intelligence Development Studio) 2005 and ran across this post...

http://tgrignon.wordpress.com/2007/12/26/sql-server-management-studio-project-path/

So when I dug into the registry, that worked for SQL Server Studio (mine was set up under Shell, not ShellSEM)... then I searched around for BIDS and for version 2005.  That is located here

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0

So to sum it up...
Change the default path for SQL Server Management Studio here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Shell

and change the default path for Business Intelligence Development Studio here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0

So the first post...

So I've started a new job a little while back.  It's my first venture into the whole SQL Server suite (SSRS, SSIS, SSAS) and I've done quite a bit of on-the-job training.  Coming from an Oracle and Crystal background, a lot of things aren't quite the same.  Here's my blog on stuff I thought was pretty cool or just took forever for me to find.  It's going to be pretty basic things, so hopefully there's an audience for it.