This is just a note for me as it took a while to find on the net and even then it was confusing as to why it works but it does. Not sure whether you call this an MDX Query or part of a Transact-SQL mashup. You need to go to "Fill" (of each text box in the row - unless there's a faster way) and instead of color, click on the expression button (fx) and use the following:

=IIF(RowNumber(Nothing) Mod 2, "#ffffff", "#eeeeee")

or 

=IIF(RowNumber(Nothing) Mod 2, "WhiteSmoke", "Garamond")

This is telling the report to be white (=#ffffff) in row 1 (odd row numbers) and a very light grey (=#eeeeee) in row 2 (even row numbers). The first row being of all rows in the dataset and not for a particular drill-down item. It will alternate between the two for the rest of the report. [The second example is what I use most frequently].

• Given a date, the date format was reverting to US format as opposed to European
• Given a Campus as a text value, the SQL query was ignoring this completely
• Hardcoding the scalar local variables worked

MySQL Connector/Net

Server=myServerAddress;Database=myDataBase;Uid=myUsername;Pwd=myPassword;

Server=myServerAddress;Port=1234;Database=myDataBase;Uid=myUsername;Pwd=myPassword;

Following up on my article on correcting disappearing headers, a further issue with our web-report is that even an export to Excel (Data Only) from Crystal Reports 9, created extra columns.  This issue could not be replicated on the client machine (ie. from my workstation).  I would have to upload the report to the server, configure the web application to use the newly uploaded report, export to a Crystal Report, which in turn we export to Excel:

Note that as this is from within a web application, there are no extra options or dialogs to select.  The export had to work from this point on.  I can't take any credit for the below as it was copied from http://hosteddocs.ittoolbox.com/ST030504.pdf.  A "Crystal Decisions" documentation.

If you've been to the point where you're exporting a report to Excel, and only some of the column headers appear, then try this:

I googled this for ages and found different suggestions here and there but none of them produced consistent results.  One solution was to untick "Simplify page headers" on the Excel Format Options when you export the report.  Because our report is exported via a web-based system, this extra dialog doesn't appear when our users export their reports.  Not that it solved it as only some different headers appeared on the exported report when we followed that suggestion.

Consider the following report in design view, only the circled headings would appear on the exported report:

Intro

I know there are a lot of articles on the WWW detailing this process but none of them really worked for me.  I recently changed job and no longer have all my test machines at work.  Instead I only have the one workstation :eek  Still I've been asked to test some web applications (???) so I had to find a solution to suit me.  I'd done this before IE7 (so a long time since).

My office workstation setup for this is:

• HP CMT DC7900
• E5300 @ 2.60Ghz
• 2Gb RAM
• Windows XP Professional SP2 
• Internet Explorer 7

As you can tell, not the most up-to-date but unfortunately I need to stay near to my customer base and match their setups as closely as possible.

Basically I thought that the regional settings of a report generated using Report Builder 2.0 on a MS SQL Server 2008 instance were dependent on either the server or the client machine.  Realised that this was actually specified in the report. Here's a quick note on how to set Dates and Times used in parameter fields to UK format (dd/MM/yyyy).

• SQL Server 2008
• Report Builder 2.0
• BMC Service Desk Express 9.8

• Incident #
• Group Name
• Close Date & Time
• Assigned to Full Name
• Incident Type

Yes, well don't laugh, I could not find this on the WWW so I was obviously not using Google properly.  Anyway here's just a quick note on how to do if else statements in Report Builder 2.0

I'm looking at the following if statement:

If (MyFieldName = 0) Then
     Return 1
Else
     Return MyFieldName

Can be expressed as:

IIf(Fields!MyFieldName.Value = 0, 1, Fields!MyFieldName.Value)

The Issue

After modifying a report and on running it, Report Builder 2.0 returns the following error:

An error occurred during local report processing.
An error has occurred during report processing.
Query execution failed for dataset 'DataSet1'.
The variable name '@GroupName' has already been declared.  Variable names must be unique within a query batch or stored procedure.

Thought I'd put something here as a lot of my clients and friends are all surprised by the Aero features and weren't aware that these existed in Windows Vista (and originally from Linux variants).

Sometimes you may only have partial Aero effects. This can be because Windows may not think your machine is powerful enough to run these effects without affecting performance.

If this is happening to you, and you don’t mind about a possible slight slow down on performance you can force enable them -

1. Go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> System
2. Click on advanced system settings on the left and then performance settings.
3. Under the visual effects tab you should see that the option “ Let windows choose what’s best for my computer “ is by default checked.
4. Below it you should see a list of visual effects, some of which will be unchecked if you are not experiencing the full range of Aero features.
5. Select the custom option and then select all the effects from the list below it. Hit apply and ok and you should have all the Aero effects enabled.

Now what are these Aero effects?

Typing an ASCII character

In DOS:

Hold down the <Alt> key while typing the decimal number on the keyboard keypad. (Example:  <Alt>178)

 

In Windows for a DOS character:

Hold down <Alt> while typing the decimal on the keyboard keypad. (Example:  <Alt>230)

 

In Windows for a WIN character:

Hold down <Alt> while typing "0" then the decimal number on the keyboard keypad. (Example:  <Alt>0140)