Fuzzy Lexicon - a roadmap to blend art with technology

This Part of my life is called “Designing”

ajaykumarks — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 05:07:00 GMT

Dated : November 2012 – Unified Diagnostic Ecosystem Campaign

Unified Diagnositcs Iniative is driven by a combination of dedicated and virtual team engineers such as the Diagnoistcs leadership team consiting of engineers world wide within CSS, CTS, PFE, the Managed Inovation Team, & GIO in Patener ship with PQO and MSIT. The core goles are to reduce the cost and increase the effectiveness of diagnostics.

Poster 1

Poster 2

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Dated : November 2012 – Market Share Awareness @ Microsoft India GTSC

An awareness campaign initated at Microsoft India GTSC for Market Share Contribution channel creation.

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Dated : October 2012 – Career Advisory Council @ Microsoft India GTSC

A forum to mentor engineers and managers and create a pipeline to get them ramped up for their next career role.

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Dated : September 2012 – Evengelize KUDOS Portal

This was one of the inhouse awareness campaign about the Global Kudos Portal. This led the new engineers who were hired in the FY12 to get familiarity to the way share feedbacks easily.

Dangler

Poster 1

Poster 2

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Dated : February 2012 – Developer Live Event

This was a event conducted here at Microsoft India for the developer community , where in the SME's in the specific technology areas conducted technical triages on a weekly basis.

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Dated : August 2011 – Escalation Summit (India)

This was an India wide event for the Escalation Resources in India. Escalation Managers and their Direct reportees participated in this annual event.

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Dated : June 2011 – Project Neuron

Project Neuron aimed to unify information into an intuitive interface, providing vital insight necessary to truly know the customer and build lifetime loyalty.

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Dated : April 2011 – TechDays @ Microsoft India GTSC

An event to showcase the upcoming technologies and the support boundaries around them.

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Dated : February 2011 – UDE Awareness Campaing @ Microsoft India GTSC

Unified Diagnostic Ecosystem was made publicly available to the customers and this was first marketing campaing run here at Microsoft India GTSC.

Poster 1

Poster 2

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Dated : January 2011 – Tech Lead - Escalation Meet @ Microsoft India GTSC

An event to collaborate with the Technical Leads and Escalation Engineers across various Support Divisions of Microsoft India.

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Dated : September 2010 – Family Day Event @ Microsoft India GTSC

An event to celebrate family and their continued support in our line of work.

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Dated : May 2010 – Content Month @ Microsoft India GTSC

Creation of this poster was not something that was planned from long. I was approached by the event organizers for the design of the *Content Month* Poster for the Developer Support Business here at Microsoft India Global Technical Support Centre, Bangalore. A month long activity where in people get to create Technical content for which they have lucrative prizes.

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Dated : April 2010 – Developer Launch Wave @ Microsoft India GTSC

Developer Support at Microsoft India GTSC had lined-up different technical sessions spanning multiple Microsoft Products that were presented aimed to create technical awareness around the new products that will be released this year. Event name was coined as *Developer Launch Wave*. I designed the Event promotion poster.

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Dated : Jan 2010 – Developer Support Division Sporty League

Four groups at Microsoft India Global Technical Support Centre, Bangalore Developer Support Internet, Developer Support Core, Developer Support Database & DS MGMT competed against each other to be crowned the Developer Support CHAMPIONS in the inaugural edition of *Developer Sporty League* . I designed the Main Event Poster, certificates and the Medallions.

Developer Sporty League – Main Event Poster

8 Ball Pool

Arm wrestling

Foosball

Lightning Chess

Rope Pulling

Table tennis

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Dated : Jan 2009 – Microsoft Developer Support Rewards Portal

A central portal where Rewards and Recognitions for Microsoft Developer Support Engineers are displayed. This project was initiated by the Developer Support Management team at Microsoft India GTSC. I had designed the promotional posters and the Design content for the portal.

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Dated : Jan 2009 – Microsoft Developer Support P2P Award

I designed the P2P Award ( Peer to Peer ) certificate which was yet another Developer Support Management Project at Microsoft India GTSC.

Unable to do remote SQL Stored Procedure debugging from VS2010

ajaykumarks — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 12:29:19 GMT

This post describes an interesting scenario that I came across when working with on Visual Studio Project based issue.

In this situation, customer was unable to debug stored procedures on a remote SQL Server using Visual Studio. The SQL Server was running on a Virtual Machine that was in a different domain than the domain of the local machine (machine on which Visual Studio was running).

Customer was able to create a data connection in the Visual Studio server explorer without any problems. The problem occurred when he performed the following steps:

Selecting a particular stored procedure from the list and tried to step into a stored procedure. That’s when he was noticing a message in the output window: "Canceled by user"

Adding to this, there was another point that was very important to be noted down here: As per the customer there is a one way trust between these domains. (The domain that the VM was residing in trusted the domain that where his local machine was located. However the local machines domain didn’t have the trust to the domain in which the VM was located. )

Before I got started with the log collection to diagnose the problem , I wanted to verify the pre-requisites of the remote debugging in the customer's environment.

On the computer running Visual Studio 2008:

Configured firewall to add the following inbound port exceptions: TCP 135, UDP 400, and UDP 500.

2. Added program exception to the firewall for DevEnv.exe.

On the computer running SQL Server :

Configured firewall to add the following inbound port exceptions: TCP 135, UDP 400, and UDP 500.

2. Added program exception to the firewall for sqlsrvr.exe.

I tried to reproduce the issue once these setting changes were implemented. But still didn't have any success with remote debugging. Probing in further found that the customer’s logged in user account on the SQL Server machine was not the member of the local administrator group on the SQL Server machine.

This came up when we reviewed the Pre-requisites of the remote debugging once again. This setting is described as a mandatory requirement in our MSDN article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w1bhybwz(v=VS.90).aspx

Once I added the logged in user on the SQL Server machine to the Local Admin group and tried to step into the stored procedure from the Visual Studio machine, customer was able debug the stored procedure successfully.

Unable to edit the connection string information in Excel 2003 Forms

ajaykumarks — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 06:49:00 GMT

Last week while i was trying to edit an Excel form based application to modify the connection string information , I felt like I was at a dead end for a few hours. I was trying to edit the connection string to point the application to a different SQL Server. The Excel form application had that DSN based information hardcoded in it.

Spending a few valuable minutes talking to an Excel Expert , I learnt that in Excel 2003 form based application , there is no direct way to edit the Database Connection related information. Thank you "Addins" , there's one such addin available which can make life easier when working with those old excel 2003 files.

You can download the addin( ModifyQryPvtTbl.xla ) that i've attached in this post , hopefully this should save the trouble for all those Excel 2003 editors out there :)

Happy working !

ModifyQryPvtTbl.xla

An issue that occured when a SSIS Execute Process task was calling a remote batch file.

ajaykumarks — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 06:20:56 GMT

This post describes an interesting scenario that I came across when working with a SSIS package developer. The main issue was that we were unable to run the SSIS package that contains a execute process task calling a batch file stored on a remote server machine (without being prompted by a warning window).

The following warning message window would pop up asking the user to either acknowledge the request or cancel it:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Open File - Security Warning

The publisher could not be verified. Are you sure you want to run this software ?

Name: Test.bat

Publisher: Unknown

Type: Windows Batch file

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Because of this, when trying to executing the SSIS package through a SQL agent job, the job was doomed to fail if the user didn’t acknowledge the options shown by the security warning prompt. Thus began our troubleshooting, where in, at first I verified that the user had the read-write-execute permission to the path where this batch file was saved.

Moving ahead, verified that UAC was turned off on the Server machine. Performing a simple test, we copied the batch file to the local machine and tried to execute the package from the Business Intelligence Studio. The package execution was successful and it didn’t bother to ask for a prompt.

Hence we clearly isolated the problem to be a permission specific issue. We also tried to set the command line parameter for the batch file with the switch " /C " , but it didn’t seem to help in anyway. So this all trickled down to be a remote application permission launch issue. This is how we fixed the problem:

Launched Internet Explorer -> Internet options -> Security -> choose Internet -> Custom Level ->

Traverse up to Launching applications and unsafe files option and modified the setting (radio button) from the default value of "Prompt" to "Enable".

Now when the end customer tried to run the SSIS package from Business Intelligence Studio \ SQL agent , there was no warning being prompted when the execute process task tried to run a remote batch file. Thus the SSIS was package was now able to complete successfully.

That's it for today, until next time....

Error while trying to create a New SSIS project using BIDS 2008

ajaykumarks — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 13:15:00 GMT

It's not everyday that a Business Intelligence Studio Developer runs into an Issue which he cannot troubleshoot and fix it all by himself. My friend called into my cell number on a Sunday night , while I was relaxing on my couch watching the Latest episode of Dexter. From his frustrated voice on the other end , I could figure out that he had tried almost every action of basic troubleshooting. The problem he was facing , was something like this :

When trying to create a New SSIS package using Business Intelligence Studio 2008 on a Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition (x86) machine , there was error thrown by the Package designer :

"Microsoft Visual Studio is unable to load this document. Exception has been thrown by the target of the invocation."

My friend in his pale voice spoke , "Ajay , can you please take a look into this yaar ?"... Well , anything for a friend. Switched off the Dexter , "Dexter can wait !" I said and I swithced on my PC to start a Live meeting and to get started with some remote troubleshooting( Free-unpaid-support is what I could call this as ).

As soon as the Live meeting started , he was able to reproduce the issue for me and there it was , the Error message! "Well" , I though and decided to get started by Installing the Debugging tools for Windows (32bit). I knew I would also need to download the PSSCOR2 debugging extension.

Listing my steps to troubleshoot the issue :

Once the Debugging tools for Windows were installed , I opened a command prompt and traversed to the location where the debugging tools were installed.
Started the Business Intelligence Studio 2008 and opened the task manager to get the Process ID for the DEVENV.exe. In this scenario , the PID was 456
In the Command Prompt , typed in the following to capture the crash dumps for the error that will be seen on the BIDS 2008 Designer Screen :

adplus -crash -p 456 - fullonfirst

As soon I hit enter , the debugger was attached to the DEVENV.exe process and started monitoring it for any first chance exceptions that might be raised.
Now going back to the BIDS 2008 , Tried to create a New SQL Server Integration Services Project.
Within a few seconds , the error message was shown on the Visual Studio Screen.
Closed the BIDS 2008 and looked into the Debugging tools for Windows folder. aaah ! there were dump files captured in there.

Now that I had the dump files , I opened Windbg and loaded the PSSCOR2 Extension after loading the dump file. Here's what happened next :

First task was to print the exeception using the !pe command :

0:000> !pe
Exception object: 0481e76c
Exception type: System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException
Message: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
InnerException: System.ArgumentException, use !PrintException 048141e4 to see more
StackTrace (generated):

StackTraceString:
HResult: 80131604

Next , moving on to print the exception 048141e4

0:000> !PrintException 048141e4
Exception object: 048141e4
Exception type: System.ArgumentException
Message: Font 'Verdana' does not support style 'Regular'.
InnerException:
StackTrace (generated):
    SP       IP       Function
    00162FB8 70DC22EF System_Drawing_ni!System.Drawing.Font.CreateNativeFont()+0x10192f
    00162FC8 70CC01B8 System_Drawing_ni!System.Drawing.Font.Initialize(System.Drawing.FontFamily, Single, System.Drawing.FontStyle, System.Drawing.GraphicsUnit, Byte, Boolean)+0xb8
    00162FF8 70CB3DA6 System_Drawing_ni!System.Drawing.Font.Initialize(System.String, Single, System.Drawing.FontStyle, System.Drawing.GraphicsUnit, Byte, Boolean)+0x56
    00163020 70D76A4F System_Drawing_ni!System.Drawing.Font..ctor(System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationInfo, System.Runtime.Serialization.StreamingContext)+0x25f

Was interested to see what would the Dump Object on 048141e4 reveal , hence

0:000> !do 048141e4
Name: System.ArgumentException
MethodTable: 6de97354
EEClass: 6dc64294
Size: 76(0x4c) bytes
(C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_32\mscorlib\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\mscorlib.dll)
Fields:
      MT    Field   Offset                 Type VT     Attr    Value Name
6deb0ae8 40000b5        4        System.String 0 instance 00000000 _className
6deaff5c 40000b6        8 ...ection.MethodBase 0 instance 00000000 _exceptionMethod
6deb0ae8 40000b7        c        System.String 0 instance 00000000 _exceptionMethodString
6deb0ae8 40000b8       10        System.String 0 instance 0481e5c0 _message
6deaa444 40000b9       14 ...tions.IDictionary 0 instance 00000000 _data
6deb0c7c 40000ba       18     System.Exception 0 instance 00000000 _innerException
6deb0ae8 40000bb       1c        System.String 0 instance 00000000 _helpURL
6deb0704 40000bc       20        System.Object 0 instance 0481e700 _stackTrace
6deb0ae8 40000bd       24        System.String 0 instance 00000000 _stackTraceString
6deb0ae8 40000be       28        System.String 0 instance 00000000 _remoteStackTraceString
6deb2d34 40000bf       34         System.Int32 1 instance        0 _remoteStackIndex
6deb0704 40000c0       2c        System.Object 0 instance 00000000 _dynamicMethods
6deb2d34 40000c1       38         System.Int32 1 instance -2147024809 _HResult
6deb0ae8 40000c2       30        System.String 0 instance 00000000 _source
6deb33b0 40000c3       3c        System.IntPtr 1 instance        0 _xptrs
6deb2d34 40000c4       40         System.Int32 1 instance -532459699 _xcode
6deb0ae8 40001ec       44        System.String 0 instance 00000000 m_paramName

0:000> !do 0481e5c0
Name: System.String
MethodTable: 6deb0ae8
EEClass: 6dc6d65c
Size: 130(0x82) bytes
(C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_32\mscorlib\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\mscorlib.dll)
String: Font 'Verdana' does not support style 'Regular'.
Fields:
      MT    Field   Offset                 Type VT     Attr    Value Name
6deb2d34 4000096        4         System.Int32 1 instance       57 m_arrayLength
6deb2d34 4000097        8         System.Int32 1 instance       48 m_stringLength
6deb17c8 4000098        c          System.Char 1 instance       46 m_firstChar
6deb0ae8 4000099       10        System.String 0   shared   static Empty
    >> Domain:Value 03b32dc0:04641198 <<
6deb1718 400009a       14        System.Char[] 0   shared   static WhitespaceChars
    >> Domain:Value 03b32dc0:046417a8 <<

This error message gave me a hint that it was an issue related to probably a corrupted font on my friend's machine. Hence without any further thoughts , I went directly into the "C:\WINDOWS\Fonts" folder and started looking for the Verdana fonts. I could notice that there were 3 types of fonts for Verdana.

I compared the same location on my virtual Windows 2003 OS and found the following fonts for Verdana :

Damn !!! The Missing font was Verdana ( True Type) . I copied this font from my machine and pasted into the fonts folder on my Friend's faulty server machine. The next few clicks of my mouse were so fast and rapid , as I tried to launch BIDS 2008 again and created a New SQL Server Integration Service Project. Eureka !!! The SSIS designer was now loaded sucessfully.

The issue was thus resolved. I didn't look into this further ahead to understand ( poke in ) what would have caused such a wierd issue in the first place. My Friend promised me a treat next time we meet and hung up on me. I wanted to see if I could get to watch the remaining minutes of Dexter... aaahhh... by the time I could get load the screen , the end credits were in play :)

A short story about the "SSIS Service that Failed to start ".

ajaykumarks — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 06:16:00 GMT

This is a short story about a how technical support engineer (Mr. Y) saved the day for one of his Enterprise customer (Mr. X) >

One fine morning Mr. X logged into his PC to start working on his pending SSIS project. He wanted to make sure his machine has all the necessary settings available to successfully get him started with the project. He was almost done finishing his checklist and when he was about to close the Windows services console , he noticed something that would ruin his entire day. He noticed that the SQL Server Integration Service was not running. He said "what's the big deal ?" and tried to start the service. His hopes came crashing down when he noticed the error message as below :

"Damn!" , He cursed his PC. He started googling around for the error , but nothing helped him to fix his problem. After spending his entire afternoon trying to get this fixed , he gave up. He called up his friend , who gave him a variety of ideas , but none of them turned out to be productive. Finally he decided to contact Microsoft Support , to fix his problem.

The flow of the support call was as follows :

The Support professional Mr. Y checked the event viewer logs on Mr. X's machine after he tried to reproduce the issue once. There were 2 error messages in the System event logs that caught Mr. Y's attention.

Event Type: Error

Event Source: Service Control Manager

Event Category: None

Event ID: 7000

Date: 11/13/2010

Time: 6:24:29 AM

User: N/A

Computer: AJAYSERV2003

Description:

The SQL Server Integration Services service failed to start due to the following error:

The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Event Type: Error

Event Source: Service Control Manager

Event Category: None

Event ID: 7009

Date: 11/13/2010

Time: 6:24:29 AM

User: N/A

Computer: AJAYSERV2003

Description:

Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for the SQL Server Integration Services service to connect.

Mr. Y knew what exactly had to be done as the next step to dig deeper into this. Mr. Y updated Mr. X that he would be collecting few logs to understand what could be going wrong behind the screens.

The path of troubleshooting:

Mr. Y enabled the Sqldumper.exe utility to generate dump files by following this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941151 This article elaborated on how to enable the SSIS related process to internally call the Sqldumper.exe utility to generate a dump file. The Sqldumper.exe utility generates the dump file in the "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\ErrorDumps" folder.

Mr. Y tried to start the service once again. This generated the dump file in the above specified log location. To look into the dump file , Mr. Y needed windbg. He Updated Mr. X that he would need to download Debugging tools for windows.

After installing the tools , Mr. Y launched Windbg and loaded the dump file into the workspace. The very first he tried do was to DumpStackObjects using the (dso) command

0:000> !dso

OS Thread Id: 0x1b34 (0)

ESP/REG Object Name

0027ef90 050a7380 System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException

0027ef94 010bec3c System.Configuration.ClientConfigurationSystem

0027efd8 050a7380 System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException

0027efe8 050a7094 System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException

0027efec 050a7380 System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException

0027eff0 010bec3c System.Configuration.ClientConfigurationSystem

0027eff8 050a7094 System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException

0027f000 050a7380 System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException

0027f008 010bec3c System.Configuration.ClientConfigurationSystem

0027f0f8 010bec3c System.Configuration.ClientConfigurationSystem

0027f0fc 010bec3c System.Configuration.ClientConfigurationSystem

0027f118 010bec04 System.String system.diagnostics

0027f11c 010bec04 System.String system.diagnostics

0027f120 010bec3c System.Configuration.ClientConfigurationSystem

0027f130 010bec3c System.Configuration.ClientConfigurationSystem

0027f140 010bec04 System.String system.diagnostics

0027f150 010bec04 System.String system.diagnostics

0027f160 010be7f0 System.Diagnostics.TraceSwitch

0027f16c 010be7f0 System.Diagnostics.TraceSwitch

0027f178 010bebf8 System.Object

0027f194 010be7f0 System.Diagnostics.TraceSwitch

0027f198 010be8f4 System.String InitializeComSecurity: Enter

0027f1ac 010be7f0 System.Diagnostics.TraceSwitch

0027f1c4 010be7f0 System.Diagnostics.TraceSwitch

0027f1e0 010be7f0 System.Diagnostics.TraceSwitch

0027f1e4 010be8f4 System.String InitializeComSecurity: Enter

0027f1f0 010be8f4 System.String InitializeComSecurity: Enter

0027f200 010be7f0 System.Diagnostics.TraceSwitch

0027f20c 010be9dc System.Object[] (System.Object[])

Proceeding further Mr.Y tried to Dump the Object (do) 050a7380

0:000> !do 050a7380

Name: System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException

MethodTable: 708f6b18

EEClass: 708c27dc

Size: 92(0x5c) bytes

GC Generation: 0

(C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Configuration\2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\System.Configuration.dll)

Fields:

MT Field Offset Type VT Attr Value Name

6ec10b24 40000b5 4 System.String 0 instance 00000000 _className

6ec0ff98 40000b6 8 ...ection.MethodBase 0 instance 00000000 _exceptionMethod

6ec10b24 40000b7 c System.String 0 instance 00000000 _exceptionMethodString

6ec10b24 40000b8 10 System.String 0 instance 050a742c _message

6ec0a480 40000b9 14 ...tions.IDictionary 0 instance 00000000 _data

6ec10cb8 40000ba 18 System.Exception 0 instance 050a7094 _innerException

6ec10b24 40000bb 1c System.String 0 instance 00000000 _helpURL

6ec10740 40000bc 20 System.Object 0 instance 050a7628 _stackTrace

6ec10b24 40000bd 24 System.String 0 instance 00000000 _stackTraceString

6ec10b24 40000be 28 System.String 0 instance 00000000 _remoteStackTraceString

6ec12d70 40000bf 34 System.Int32 1 instance 0 _remoteStackIndex

6ec10740 40000c0 2c System.Object 0 instance 00000000 _dynamicMethods

6ec12d70 40000c1 38 System.Int32 1 instance -2146232062 _HResult

6ec10b24 40000c2 30 System.String 0 instance 00000000 _source

6ec133ec 40000c3 3c System.IntPtr 1 instance 0 _xptrs

6ec12d70 40000c4 40 System.Int32 1 instance -532459699 _xcode

6ec10b24 40030e4 44 System.String 0 instance 00000000 _filename

6ec12d70 40030e5 48 System.Int32 1 instance 0 _line

6ec10b24 4000253 4c System.String 0 instance 00000000 _firstFilename

6ec12d70 4000254 54 System.Int32 1 instance 0 _firstLine

6ebe42f4 4000255 50 System.Object[] 0 instance 00000000 _errors

Moving on , he tried to view what the exception message had to say :

0:000> !do 050a742c

Name: System.String

MethodTable: 6ec10b24

EEClass: 6e9cd65c

Size: 100(0x64) bytes

GC Generation: 0

(C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_32\mscorlib\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\mscorlib.dll)

String: Configuration system failed to initialize

Fields:

MT Field Offset Type VT Attr Value Name

6ec12d70 4000096 4 System.Int32 1 instance 42 m_arrayLength

6ec12d70 4000097 8 System.Int32 1 instance 41 m_stringLength

6ec11804 4000098 c System.Char 1 instance 43 m_firstChar

6ec10b24 4000099 10 System.String 0 shared static Empty

>> Domain:Value 0034b260:050601d0 <<

6ec11754 400009a 14 System.Char[] 0 shared static WhitespaceChars

>> Domain:Value 0034b260:05060a7c <<

Next , Mr. Y tried to access the inner exception

0:000> !do 050a7094

Name: System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException

MethodTable: 708f6b18

EEClass: 708c27dc

Size: 92(0x5c) bytes

GC Generation: 0

(C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Configuration\2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\System.Configuration.dll)

Fields:

MT Field Offset Type VT Attr Value Name

6ec10b24 40000b5 4 System.String 0 instance 00000000 _className

6ec0ff98 40000b6 8 ...ection.MethodBase 0 instance 00000000 _exceptionMethod

6ec10b24 40000b7 c System.String 0 instance 00000000 _exceptionMethodString

6ec10b24 40000b8 10 System.String 0 instance 050a633c _message

6ec0a480 40000b9 14 ...tions.IDictionary 0 instance 00000000 _data

6ec10cb8 40000ba 18 System.Exception 0 instance 00000000 _innerException

6ec10b24 40000bb 1c System.String 0 instance 00000000 _helpURL

6ec10740 40000bc 20 System.Object 0 instance 050a7314 _stackTrace

6ec10b24 40000bd 24 System.String 0 instance 00000000 _stackTraceString

6ec10b24 40000be 28 System.String 0 instance 00000000 _remoteStackTraceString

6ec12d70 40000bf 34 System.Int32 1 instance 0 _remoteStackIndex

6ec10740 40000c0 2c System.Object 0 instance 00000000 _dynamicMethods

6ec12d70 40000c1 38 System.Int32 1 instance -2146232062 _HResult

6ec10b24 40000c2 30 System.String 0 instance 00000000 _source

6ec133ec 40000c3 3c System.IntPtr 1 instance 0 _xptrs

6ec12d70 40000c4 40 System.Int32 1 instance -532459699 _xcode

6ec10b24 40030e4 44 System.String 0 instance 00000000 _filename

6ec12d70 40030e5 48 System.Int32 1 instance 0 _line

6ec10b24 4000253 4c System.String 0 instance 010c0cd4 _firstFilename

6ec12d70 4000254 54 System.Int32 1 instance 147 _firstLine

6ebe42f4 4000255 50 System.Object[] 0 instance 00000000 _errors

And when he tried view this inner exceptions message @ 050a633c

0:000> !do 050a633c

Name: System.String

MethodTable: 6ec10b24

EEClass: 6e9cd65c

Size: 206(0xce) bytes

GC Generation: 0

(C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_32\mscorlib\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\mscorlib.dll)

String: Unrecognized configuration section system.serviceModel.

Fields:

MT Field Offset Type VT Attr Value Name

6ec12d70 4000096 4 System.Int32 1 instance 95 m_arrayLength

6ec12d70 4000097 8 System.Int32 1 instance 55 m_stringLength

6ec11804 4000098 c System.Char 1 instance 55 m_firstChar

6ec10b24 4000099 10 System.String 0 shared static Empty

>> Domain:Value 0034b260:050601d0 <<

6ec11754 400009a 14 System.Char[] 0 shared static WhitespaceChars

>> Domain:Value 0034b260:05060a7c <<

Finally, he was able to figure out that the error in this scenario was due to Unrecognized configuration section system.serviceModel.

Step leading to Solution:

Mr. Y checked his lab machine for the machine.config file located @ : C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG

On comparing the machine.config files from Mr. X's environment with his , he found that the following system.serviceModel section group was missing in Mr. X's environment.

As soon as he copied this section into the Machine.Config file on the faulty server and tried to restart the SSIS service, EUREKA !!! SSIS Service started successfully. Mr. X's problem was thus resolved.

Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant - Video Series - #1

ajaykumarks — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 08:03:00 GMT

This is a short video series on Microsoft's new Data Migration utility : SSMA ( SQL Server Migration Assistant ). In this video you'll see the basic architecture of SSMA and different SSMA versions that are available out there in the market. Keep watching this space for more video's in the near future...

[View:http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-01-19-47/8030.ScreenCapture_5F00_09_2D00_10_2D00_2010-19.39.22.wmv]

Connectivity to SQL server fails when "Network Library = dbmssocn" is used in addtion to having a TCP alias

ajaykumarks — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 05:19:00 GMT

I recently came across this interesting issue : The end customer was trying to connect to SQL server named instance from a Remote client machine via a asp.net application. The Server instance that he was connecting to already had a TCP alias on the client machine. In the connection string he was specifying "Network Library = dbmssocn". The application was failing in it's attempt when trying to connect to SQL server with the following error message :

Test connection failed because of an error in initializing provider. [DBNETLIB][ConnectionOpen (Connect()).]Specified SQL server not found.

When we collected the Network Monitor trace , we found that client was attempting to connect to SQL server on the UDP port 1434 rather than the TCP port 1433. While further probing into the issue , as soon as we removed the "Network Library = dbmssocn" from the application's connection string the application was able to connect to SQL server successfully.

To conclude on this issue , we found out that there was no requirement for the developers to specify the network library in the connection explicitly when they already had a TCP alias created for the SQL Server.

"How to" guide

ajaykumarks — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:48:00 GMT

I was planning to write a pending blog post with different "how to" questions answered. Not limiting the post to any specific Microsoft product / technology , I will keep updating this one as and when I find time to spare. So then , lets get started....

How to check which Domain contoller the Current User is connected to ?

Start -> cmd -> SET LOGONSERVER

How to list all the SQL Server instances present on the local machine using SQLDMO ?

Create a new text file and paste following lines of VB code in that. Next save the file with .VBS extension and double click it. An output file will be generated listing all the SQL server instances on the host machine.

Option Explicit
On Error Resume Next

Dim sSQLServer
Dim oSQLDMO
Dim oInstances
Dim nCount
Const ForWriting = 2, ForAppending = 8
Dim fso, f
Dim sFile
Dim sHostname
Dim oNTInfo

sFile = "SQLInstances_" & Year(Date) &"_"& Month(Date) & "_" & Day(Date)&"_Log.txt"
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set f = fso.OpenTextFile(sFile, ForAppending, True)

Set oNTInfo = CreateObject("WinNTSystemInfo")
sHostname = oNTInfo.ComputerName

sSQLServer = "localhost"
Set oSQLDMO = CreateObject("SQLDMO.SQLServer2")
Set oInstances = oSQLDMO.ListInstalledInstances(sSQLServer)

f.writeLine "* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *"
f.writeLine " Writing started at:" & Hour(Time) & "h" & Minute(Time) & "m" & Second(Time) & "s!"
f.writeLine " System Name=" & CStr(sHostname) & "!"
f.writeLine " SQL Server Name=" & CStr(sSQLServer) & "!" & vbCrLf

f.writeLine " Got oInstances.Count=" & CStr(oInstances.Count) & "!"
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
f.writeLine " >>       Error occured!!!          << "
f.writeLine " >>   Please send this log file     << "
f.writeLine " >> to the EMC Avamar Support Team! << "
Err.Clear
Else
For nCount = 1 To oInstances.Count
    f.writeLine " " & CStr(nCount) & ".instance=" & CStr(oInstances.Item(nCount)) & "!"
Next
End If

f.writeLine vbCrLf & " Writing ended at:"& Hour(Time) & "h" & Minute(Time) & "m" & Second(Time) & "s!"
f.writeLine "* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf

f.Close
Set oSQLDMO = Nothing
Set f = Nothing
Set fso = Nothing
Set oInstances = Nothing
Set oNTInfo = Nothing

How to check if there are any duplicate SPN's in Windows Server 2008 ?

setspn -X
Here X will search for duplicate SPNs

setspn -F
Here F will perform the duplicate checking on forestwide level.

Linked server SQL <->Oracle and a revelation about using Oracle Synonyms in Four part query

ajaykumarks — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:22:00 GMT

I was working on one the Enterprise customer Incident. The issue at hand was that we were unable to use Oracle Synonyms in a Four part naming query against a SQL-Oracle Linked Server. To probe the scenario, I had to set up a repro locally.

Step 1 : To Create a test user on Oracle

Login using a SYSTEM account ( This would preferably be a SYSADMIN account ). In this scenario, Oracle10g host name was ORCL.

Create user TEST identified by TEST;

Grant connect, resource to TEST;

Grant create synonym to TEST;

Alter user SYSTEM account unlock;

Connect SYSTEM/*******@ORCL

Grant select on EMP to TEST;

Connect TEST/TEST@ORCL

Create synonym EMP FOR SYSTEM.EMP;

Step 2 : Creating Linked Server in SQL Server 2005

Here in my example , I'm calling the Linked Server as TIGER. Specify the product name as Oracle and Data source as ORCL.

In the security page of the linked server, choose the option "Be made using this security context" and specify the login of the Test user created previously.

To test the issue , I created a table EMP in Oracle with the following contents:

Once this done, we start querying using four part query:

Further continuing, when we use Oracle Synonym in our four part query we observe the following:

Full Error message is:

Msg 7314, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

The OLE DB provider "OraOLEDB.Oracle" for linked server "TIGER" does not contain the table ""Test"."EMP"". The table either does not exist or the current user does not have permissions on that table.

After spending some quality time doing research on this issue, found that this is a limitation in the Linked Server infrastructure when using Oracle Synonym in four part query.

Found that open query works fine using the Synonym. The other method to execute a four part query would be to use Oracle views instead of Synonyms.

Hence dropped the synonym which I had created earlier by running the following query :

Drop synonym EMP;

Next created a view by running the following query :

Create view EMP as select * from SYSTEM.EMP;

Next when i tried to run the four part query again but instead of oracle synonym , I used the Oracle View and the result was as below:

Conclusion :

Oracle synonyms will not work with four part queries in a SQL-Oracle linked server. Workaround is to use Open query or to use Oracle views instead of synonyms. A revelation after a long overhaul of trials and errors.