<<Today, Installed SSRS for my next assignment, apart from usual installation, I found few things which need to be remembered. Posting Here for future use (May be for a complete article) >>

At its core, Reporting Services is a Windows service that relies on a pair of databases hosted by an instance of the SQL Server Database Engine. Interaction with the Reporting Services Windows service is provided through applications such as Report Manager, hosted by Reporting Services, and other applications such as the Business Intelligence Development Studio.

With the basic installation, server – and client – side components are installed on a single system. The Reporting Services databases are also installed to a local instance of the SQL Server Database Engine. With no dependencies on other systems, the basic installation is often referred to as a stand – alone installation .

With the installation completed, your final step should be to verify the installation. Open Internet Explorer, and enter one of the following URLs:

If you installed a default instance, enter http://localhost/reports .
If you installed a named instance, enter http://localhost/reports_instancename , with the appropriate substitution.

A crisp code @

http://geekswithblogs.net/vivek/archive/2006/09/26/92316.aspx

Tried exporting to word…. worked well, for excel, it was showing warning though content was present .

Anyway try in deep on Thursday..

Started reading the book “Learning ASP.NET 3.5”. Was thinking to maintain a timeline for reading the book. So Here I go!!

Started the book @ 12:10 PM

Chapter 1 finished @ 1:20 PM

This week, I spent a fairly large amount of my work-time in company library. was looking for a good book on ASP.NET . Unfortunately could not found any one except few Bible-kinda books. I am already lagging the target and can’t afford reading such biggies. Buying a decent book this weekend was a good option.

While surfing an o’reilly book, I came to know about Safari Online and my client company have free subscriptions. You can read all the O’reilly and almost every MSPRESS book here online.

The best thing about it: it saves paper –> Tree –> Eco friendly way to read books.

You can save pages into PDF with any pdf printing software (For example – PrimoPDF) or can take printouts if necessary. I will recommend you for its subscription, if you frequently need to refer technical books.

PS: I did not pay for subscription, my client provided free account. As a normal user, you need to pay for subscription.

Last week I gave a presentation on PowerShell during Wipro internal KM Session. It was for beginners and don’t go into deep. Also the tone of ppt was kept “less technical” as a good percentage of audiences belonged to management or higher level. Thought to post it here. To maintain IP policy I removed 4 slides of presentation as they had reference to my project/Client.

Click Here for PPT

Today while developing a PS script, I came across few interesting features of PowerShell. Generally command parameters depends on the cmdlet being used. But there are few parameters that can be used with almost every cmdlet. By design, every cmdlet bound to support them although using them in certain cases won’t produce any output. So what can they do for you? They can override PowerShell preference variables and system defaults for a single cmdlet.

Complete details can be found using get-help about_commonparameters

What I was using in my today’s case, is a “Risk mitigation parameter”’  ‘–confirm’. This parameter prompts user before executing the cmdlet. In my script I wanted to delete few log files that were generated by another part of script. I wanted a prompt for user before deleting the files. Here is the one liner “demo” script for it:

remove-item "Killme.TXT" -confirm:$true

Note that if you check the syntax in the help content of remove-item, you can see [<CommonParameters>] in the last.

Here is the screenshot what you will get from the demo script line.

1. It’s best to use environment variables when getting things like the path to the Windows directory, because you can’t always assume that the result is going to be C:\Windows. To get any environment variable’s value, just use $env:<environment variable name>

2. Before you can use a function in Windows PowerShell, you must define it. If you want to define a function in a script, the definition (code) for the function must come before you use it the first time. This rule is especially important to keep in mind if you have some experience with VBScript, because unlike Windows PowerShell, VBScript allows you to define functions anywhere you want within the script.

Today I got notification to upgrade my Microsoft Security Essential installation. Frankly speaking, I like its weightless operation on my Windows 7 system.

After Upgrade, version info:

Microsoft Security Essentials Version:  1.0.1961.0
Antimalware Client Version: 2.1.6519.0
Engine Version: 1.1.5502.0
Antivirus definitions: 1.77.667.0
Antispyware definitions: 1.77.667.0

Then What is new in this version? As per Microsoft latest version is having improved messaging, scan reports and have few performance improvements. Now the new version also assure running the “Windows Activation Technology” for it. Not much clear with the last line

For more info, click Here

Today I installed 5 WU on my Win7 Ultimate laptop. As nothing special to do on this night, I thought to write about them.

1. KB979306: Related to Daylight saving time and new time zone laws.

2. KB976662: IE8’s JSON interoperability in Conformance with new ECMAScript, 5th Edition.

3. KB977863: Cumulative update for media center for Windows 7. For a complete listing of issues fix, refer the KB article here

4. KB971033: Hero of the day! Update for Windows Activation Technologies, which detects activation exploits & tampering to key windows system files. KB article here

5. KB976264: Related to AppCompatibility issues. For a complete listing of the fixed issues, refer the KB article here.

Here, I want to discuss about the last update, which is related to Application compatibility issues. This fix is applicable for LongHorn SP2 and above and makes no registry key changes, no restart required. If I am wrong, This is the first AppCompatibility package for Windows 7 & Server R2.

Around 329 Apps fixed with this (on Win7). Like in NERO 8,  Preview option should work when you open a photo in Nero PhotoSnap. Hmm! Sound useful fix as it covers many popular apps. FYI, it also (Hard/soft)Blocks around 52 Applications. Why? Just for making Your Windows Experience better!!