CouchDBExtension - I've recently started work on a new project named CouchDBExtension which is hosted here on codeplex. In short it's a data processing extension that allows you to use Apache's CouchDB databases as a data source in SQL Server Reporting Services. For those of you who are unfamiliar with CouchDB it's a schema-free, document-oriented database system with a REST JSON API and is written in Erlang. Screenshots The project is just getting underway and I'd appreciate any help or feedback anyone has to offer.
SSRS scripting with RS.EXE - At work we've recently deployed SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and it's been quite interesting. In general I love the product but of course as with everything there are situations where you have to do more than the management tools provide and you have to write some scripts. SSRS provides an interesting scripting facility, RS.EXE, which allows you to run VB .Net code against the management web service of SSRS. I encountered a situation where I had to add a user to the policy as the "Browser" role for all folders in my SSRS environment. Because I didn't want to inherit parent item security to all objects I had no clean way of accomplishing that other than programmatically. I wrote up a quick script and this task will be easy as...
Accessing SimpleDB from SSRS - Largely for my own amusement recently I became interested in the idea of accessing Amazon's SimpleDB from SQL Server Reporting Services. After searching around the web for a while I realized the only solution I'd be happy with was to write my own data processing extension for SSRS that can access SimpleDB. For those of you not familiar with SSRS data processing extensions they're simply libraries that teach reporting services how to talk to data sources. They merely require you to implement a few interfaces such as IDbCommand, IDbConnection and IDataReader from Microsoft.ReportingServices.DataProcessing. A great introduction to developing these extensions can be found here. After a few days of work I got a decent start on a library written in C# 2008 named SimpleDBExtension that I've published here on CodePlex. At...
My Tool List - One of the more popular thing's Scott Hanselman has done is maintain a tool List, essentially a list of applications and utilities that he's found useful. There are plenty of absolute gems in his list and rather than present my own I'd be very comfortable just pointing you to his... But what fun would that be? None! I also think there are a few more that I can add that are relevant to my personal experience. The list is rather short and there's a bit of overlap with Scott's but if all goes as planned I'll expand it over time as old useful tools come to mind or I discover new ones. Cloud iAWSManager - This is an iPhone app that lets you manage many of the functions of Amazon Web...
