Cody Konior Senior Database Administrator

Error handling in PowerShell (and the real world)

PowerShell error handling is great but becomes more complicated as your functions become more complicated and interdependent. For a while I used -ErrorAction Stop on everything because I was available to immediately deal with unforseen problems, but when functions call functions sometimes you don't really want them to just stop, you want to continue or possibly parse the output later.

SQL Server replication validation on vertically filtered articles

I use one-way transactional SQL Server replication to ship data out from a source server to multiple destinations, and recently added a publication with a vertically filtered article; that is to say a table where I exclude a column from replication because I do not want it sent to the subscribers.

SSIS stops in BIDS while debugging without showing any error

I had an error today where Business Intelligence Design Studio was running an SQL Server Integration Services package (I'm spelling it all out so search can find it) and failing with an error.

SQL CLR and "The context connection is already in use"

I encountered an error where an SQL CLR that had been in use for a long time was triggering this error from SQL Server:

Identity Columns and Not For Replication

I had replication errors recently with some subscriptions that were set up with replication support only (manually created and populated destination tables). These are transactional push subscriptions that are not updateable (i.e. they are one way only from the source to the destinations and the destinations must keep the same keys as the source).

SQL Server Transactional Replication Validation

After setting up transactional replication on a set of servers with @sync_type = "replication support only" I was receiving errors on validation where the row count was correct but the checksum was not. Meanwhile SQL Data Compare was telling me the tables on each server were exactly the same. This was caused by two issues.

SQL Server's SQLServer PSProvider and WMI

No solutions today, only sadness and finger pointing.

PowerShell "System error 85 has occurred" with net use

Today I received this message while running a PowerShell script on a remote server:

SSIS error 0xC000F427 and derived columns

I had a nasty message pop up in the middle of running an SSIS package with DTEXEC. That same package had been working fine for a long time, and was running in BIDS as recently as yesterday on the same machine with no problem.

PowerShell: How to show all of an object's properties and values

I was scratching my head looking at a complex .NET object and wondering how to get all of the values out of it. For example:

Development Office Politics

This is a funny video I haven't published here before; illustrating what happens when the needs of developers butt heads with the policies of sysops and management. This doesn't reflect a single situation or company but generalises what we've all been through at one time or another.

PowerShell: How to search a list of objects with an array of wildcards in PowerShell

I have an array of objects and I want to pull out a set where a property matches any entry in an array of strings: with wildcards. I couldn't find a solution anywhere (or even others having the same issue), so here's the thought process I went through.

ODBC imports crashing SQL Server with exception 0xC0000005

When using Ace.OLEDB to load up files, I was having sporadic problems with the entire SQL Server process crashing with this exception. I believe it's because you shouldn't allow things to run in-process, so I tried to disable it:

Apple Keyboard drivers under Windows

If you've installed the Apple Keyboard drivers with AppleKeyboardInstaller.exe (or AppleKeyboardInstaller64.exe) on a PC you'll quickly discover all the function keys are treated as special keys. To get the function keys working normally as you'd expect, it's controlled by a registry key:

Reporting Services crashes with a custom assembly

Yesterday while previewing a report I was having crashes in both the Reporting Services service (rshost) and Business Intelligence Design Studio. I was able to narrow it down to any call that involved my custom assembly code.

System.Security.Permissions.ReflectionPermission

While previewing a SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) report today a warning popped up in Business Intelligence Design Studio (BIDS) that access was denied to System.Security.Permissions.ReflectionPermission.

Error 7308 and 7303

While creating a linked server between two SQL Server 2008 x64 instances today, I received this error:

Parallels / VirtualBox using lots of CPU during idle

I recently set up a Parallels virtual machine running SQL Server and noticed lots of CPU usage even during idle. I found that people running VirtualBox had similar problems especially in conjunction with SQL Server.

How to fix obscured text when using scrolling tablix headers

I had a problem today when experimenting with FixedRowHeaders on a Tablix (and setting the static row groups FixedData property, of course). The headers would scroll with the rest of the report down the page, but be obscured by text underneath showing through.

Adding fonts to a running production server

I was adding fonts to a SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) server and testing out whether I could get them to show up on reports without rebooting the server.