Technical Thoughts of Jorriss

Here’s an interesting article on the ten rules for web startups. Is it easier now to start a web company than ever before? Yup! But the key is in the idea. If the idea sucks the site will too.

Microsoft has released a Step-By-Step guide on how to upgrade your Visual Studio 2002/2003 ASP.Net projects to Visual Studio 2005. I’ll probably be tackling this sometime soon so I’ll keep everyone posted on some of the problems that I encounter. Check out this quote from the doc:

If the application you are converting is of reasonable size and has several Web projects and additional projects, such as class libraries, in a single Visual Studio solution, it is possible to encounter issues during migration. Be prepared to spend the better part of a day completing the entire process. The steps and guidance provided in this article can help an informed user to migrate most applications of medium complexity.

Is seventeen projects, two of them web projects, in a single solution several? I might have some “issues” converting. Maybe in version two of the document they’ll expound on these “issues”. Via TheServerSide.

Microsoft has created a set of SQL Server Add-ons called a "Feature Pack" for SQL Server 2005. This set of tools includes ADOMD.NET, an API for working with Analysis Services as well as a command line query utility. It also features datamining viewer controls, the SQL Server 2005 JDBC driver, and a data provider for SAP. 

The complete list of contents for the Feature Pack is:

• Microsoft ADOMD.NET
• Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) 6.0
• Microsoft OLEDB Provider for DB2
• Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Management Pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2005
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000 PivotTable Services
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000 DTS Designer Components
• Microsoft SQL Server Native Client
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services 9.0 OLE DB Provider
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Command Line Query Utility
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Datamining Viewer Controls
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Management Objects Collection
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Notification Services Client Components
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Advisor
• Microsoft .NET Data Provider for mySAP Business Suite
• Reporting Add-In for Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express  

Cool. An API for working with Analysis Services? I need to get my hands on that. Via TheServerSide.Net.

Over the past few months I’ve been working on the report from hell. It just about does everything you could imagine but press your shirts. One of the biggest problems we’ve had to deal with is the amount of data that needs to be processed on the fly to produce the report. After version one of the report shipped we decided to investigate different ways to access the data. That’s when we found this article on Integrating Analysis Services with Reporting Services.  It covers how to use OLAP with reporting services. Our prototype worked like a champ and now we’re creating the cubes for the data to be reported against. I just wish we thought of this three months ago.