Blog ala Vidar

SQL, AppFrame and other cool technologies

Monthly Archives: June 2010

AppEd 2010 – Ølensvåg in ENGLISH

Leave a comment Posted by Vidar Nordnes on June 25, 2010

We are happy to announce that AppEd will be in English, and that we’ve opened it for registration for all systems engineers, except Omega PS since we’re going to host their own AppEd “over there”. Your travel will be covered by Advantage Points, but accommodation, food and other stuff will be sponsored by Omega. Before you sign up, please check with your boss if it’s ok for you to go!

For more information about AppEd 2010, please go to http://apped.no. For registration go to “My Advantage” and locate AppEd 2010 Ølensvåg.

Published AppEd, Omega

Backup Stored Procedure

Leave a comment Posted by Vidar Nordnes on June 23, 2010

I’ve had a couple of issues regarding the maintenance plan-tool in management studio (at least before 2008), and therefore I’ve never really put my trust in this tool. Instead of this, I’ve created a SP which now is available as an s-object in AppFrame. Will be available with the next build, but if you need it NOW, here it is:

This will take backups, (full, diff or transactional) using default settings and saving files with the following syntax:
DatabaseName_backup_201006231500.bak

CREATE PROCEDURE sstp_Database_Maintenance_Backup
(
	@BackupType AS CHAR(4) = 'FULL',
	@BackupPath AS NVARCHAR(300)
)
AS

IF @BackupType NOT IN ('FULL', 'DIFF', 'TRAN')
BEGIN
	RAISERROR('BackupType must be set to FULL, DIFF or TRAN!', 18, 1)
	RETURN
END
ELSE IF ISNULL(@BackupPath, '') = ''
BEGIN
	RAISERROR('BackupPath does not have any value!', 18, 1)
	RETURN
END
ELSE IF RIGHT(@BackupPath, 1)  '\'
BEGIN
	SET @BackupPath = @BackupPath + '\'
END


DECLARE
  @DBNAME AS NVARCHAR(128),
  @Filename AS NVARCHAR(128),
  @SQL AS NVARCHAR(MAX)


SET @DBNAME = (SELECT DB_NAME())
SET @Filename =
	@DBNAME +
	'_backup_' +
	CONVERT(VARCHAR(8), GETDATE(), 112) +
	REPLACE(CONVERT(VARCHAR(5), GETDATE(), 108), ':', '')

IF @BackupType = 'FULL'
BEGIN
	SET @Filename = @Filename + '.bak'
	SET @SQL = 'BACKUP DATABASE [' + @DBNAME + '] '
END
ELSE IF @BackupType = 'DIFF'
BEGIN
	SET @Filename = @Filename + '.diff'
	SET @SQL = 'BACKUP DATABASE [' + @DBNAME + '] '
END
ELSE IF @BackupType = 'TRAN'
BEGIN
	SET @Filename = @Filename + '.trn'
	SET @SQL = 'BACKUP LOG [' + @DBNAME + '] '
END

SET @SQL = @SQL + 'TO DISK = N''' + @BackupPath + '' + @Filename + ''' WITH '

IF @BackupType = 'DIFF'
BEGIN
	SET @SQL = @SQL + 'DIFFERENTIAL, '
END

SET @SQL = @SQL + 'NOFORMAT, INIT, NAME = N''' + @DBNAME + ' ' + @BackupType
SET @SQL = @SQL + ' Database Backup'', SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10'

EXEC(@SQL)

You can download the .sql file from skydrive.

Published Maintenance, SQL, SQL Server

AppEd 2010 – Ølensvåg

Leave a comment Posted by Vidar Nordnes on June 22, 2010

Everything is now settled. It will be October 1-2. Since it was such a great success last time, most of us will be staying at Løo, and we’ll run the sessions in our meeting rooms here at Omega HQ, Ølensvåg. Unfortunately we were not able to make this available for everyone, so this offer is only available for Norwegian speaking developers. Don’t worry, as last time, we’ve planned having separate events in Singapore, U.S., and this time also Lithuania.

To register for the event, log on to TeamDocuments, Intranet, My Advantage. There you can find “AppEd 2010 – Ølensvåg”. It requires 0 points!

Last time we took a notice of “Lessons Learned”, and this time we’re offering more information about the sessions, more sessions (3 tracks!) and informing everyone at a much earlier stage. We’ve also got a couple of surprises for you, so go ahead and register for the event!

For more information about the agenda with sessions and other stuff, please visit http://apped.no/agenda.

Published AppEd, Omega

Nordnes.Me

Leave a comment Posted by Vidar Nordnes on June 15, 2010

A couple of weeks ago I looked in the mirror. What did I see? I saw a guy that used most of his spare time on Xbox games. So, what did I do? Well, I had to find something else to do. What else? Build a new server! Yeah yeah, I could go outside having some fresh air etc., but fresh air also comes through the windows, at least if you open them. ANYHOW! I bought two domains; nordnes.me and nrdn.es and though I’d have some fun. A while back I bought a Quad Core AMD CPU for my HDPC, but I bought a new Intel CPU for that, so the AMD processor with the main board was just lying around without being used. I bought 8 GB RAM for it, and 2 x 2TB disks. I’ve also got a Microsoft TechNet subscription, which allows me to download almost any Microsoft product for free to use in a testing environment. What’s more testing environment than my home network? 😉

Now, everything is up and running and here are the specs.

Physical server
vs – Hyper-V Server

Virtual servers, all running with 1GB RAM (2-4 while setting them up):
vsAD – Active Directory, DNS and similar
vsHS – Home Server 2003 (not running. Will probably be deleted soon)
vsLINUX – Debian. Not running, but installed in case I need to test some Linux-stuff
vsMAIL – Exchange Server 2010 (hosting vidar@nordnes.me)
vsSQL – SQL Server, running 5 instances (2005, 2008, 2008R2, Express etc)
vsVAIL – Home Server VAIL
vsWEB – Web server, hosting Nordnes.me and nrdn.es

Home Server

I’ve learned a whole bunch of stuff in the process of installing and configuring everything. Today I finished moving over to the new home server (VAIL) which based on Windows Server 2008 R2. It’s awesome! One of the new features is that you can stream your videos via web (using Silverlight). Oh, while I’m talking about home server. If you’ve got more than one computer at home (or at the office), you might want to think about buying one. It makes sharing videos, music, backing up your computers and making sure all computers have updated antivirus etc. a whole lot easier. But wait till VAIL is released! VAIL will only run on x64 bit, while the old version only runs on x86.

One thing worth mentioning: DO NOT add your Home Server to AD. You will be able to do it, but it causes so many problems. The reason I wanted to do it was to use the same username and password as on all my other machines (both physical and virtual). Also, joining machines to the home server should be done on a wired network, not on wireless. When joined, you can put them back on wireless without any problems, but I haven’t been able to join any of my computers while on wireless. Have no clue why though, since my wireless router is set up as an AP (Access Point).

Active Directory

The main reason I installed AD is that I wanted to use the same username and password on all computers, but also to play around with group policies. Also, Exchange is pretty meaningless, if not impossible, without AD.

Web

This is the server I’ve played most with. I installed SharePoint, played with Office Web Apps and most recently Nordnes.me and nrdn.es. The last one (nrdn.es) is my own test-project for bit.ly/tinyurl.com-like sites. If you’re interested I can send you the project for this one, but there’s no rocket science here. I’ve also built Nordnes.me using Master pages in ASP.NET. This is actually my first site ever in ASP.NET!

Nordnes.me is just a place where I’ve gathered all my public feeds (blog, twitter etc) into one stream. I’m using a windows service to poll all the feeds every 15 minutes or something and then using LINQ to XML (which btw is AWESOME!) with ASP.NET to display them.

Exchange

Since Omega just moved over to Exchange, I felt I had to get some more knowledge about this. It would be interesting anyways since 99% of our customers use it, so I would probably eventually “have to” build something that communicated with Exchange. Before starting the installation I was convinced that this was just another “next next next next finish” project, and I was right. At least to get it up and running. To get it to send and receive mail took a couple of hours though. I am still not able to connect to Exchange outside my network although testexchangeconnectivity.com says everything is working as it should be. Since it’s working locally it’s very hard for me to test outside my network, so I might have to pick someone up from Microsoft and get them home to see my server-collection 😀

SQL

All SQL geeks with self-respect should have at least 5 instances running at home. I’m only using 2008 R2 at the moment, where I’ve got mainly two databases. One for the tiny URLs (nrdn.es) and one for polling twitter. The reason I’m polling twitter is to gather very much data, so I can start playing with SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Services). There are two arguments for polling twitter for this; it’s public and there’s A LOT of data being generated (by people) every second.