Archive for December, 2011

Business Data Connectivity Metadata Store is currently unavailable

9 years
by in Technology

I was trying to add some externals sources to a Sharepoint list and ran into the error “Business Data Connectivity Metadata Store is currently unavailable”.

I was getting this error in both SPD and the Web Interface. After looking through the Admin Panel, I noticed that the “Business Data Connectivity Service” was running under “Central Administration -> Services”, but, there was no “Business Data Connectivity Service Application” under “Central Administration -> Service Applications” (this is because I’m pretty sure I did not add the BDCS when i created the site, but it’s normally there by default)

 

Lastly, make sure that the newly created BDCS is associated (checked) with your Web Application by going to “Central Administration -> Manage Web Applications” and clicking on Service Connections

So after creating a new “BDCS”, the error went away.

Another way to fix this, just run the configuration wizard and it should create one for you.

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Convert a PKCS#12 file (pfx) containing a private key and certificates to PEM

9 years
by in Technology

Need to add an existing SSL Cert to Apache or some Linux Based Appliance?

It’s easy, in a few simple steps…

Using OpenSSL, issue these commands:

This will output a PEM file that contains both the certificate and the private key

You can add -nocerts to only output the private key or add -nokeys to only output the certificates.

This is how i create the separate files for Jboss, Using -nocerts and -nokeys is how I create separate files for Jboss and Apache

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Inserting Screen shots into Office 2010 Documents and Emails

9 years
by in Technology

Inserting screen shots into Office documents used to be a 2 or 3 or even 4 step process.  If you didn’t have one of those screen capture utilities, then you were left with using Alt+PrintScreen or Ctrl+PrintScreen, then pasting that into MS Paint, cropping out whatever area you wanted to include, copying that, and then pasting it into your email or word document, that’s just the way it is….until Office 2010

With Office 2010 you can use the new screen shot utility…

Under Word, or Excel, or Even While composing an email in outlook….From the Menu Ribbon Select Insert, then Pick Screen Shot



You get the option of selecting one of the windows that are visible, or you can pick the “Screen Clipping” option which allows you to pick a section of the screen

 

Now that’s what I call a cool feature.  Good Job Microsoft.

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How to Launch Crystal Server Reports Via URL and Include Parameters

9 years
by in Technology

So You have a report in your Crystal Server that you want to share or include in another site, well, im going to teach you how to use the OpenDoc URL to run the report.
Here is how it works

Let’s say you have a report called Invoices.rpt located in the “Asset Management” Folder

The report has a main report and a sub report.  The report takes 2 paramenters, PONumber for the main report, and CheckNUM for the subreport

 

You Only really need a few parameters, and they are:

  • iDocID
  • lsS”ParameterName”
  • promptOnRefresh

 

NOTE: I’m assuming that your crystal viewer is “Single Sign On”, we don’t need to or care to pass a user name and password, if it is not, your user will get prompted for his credentials.  I suggest you work on getting SSO working, as this makes the process quick and painless

 

How to get the Report ID

 

In order to get the report ID, right click the report and select properties

 

 

The ID is shown under the Report Title (this is the same as iDocID)

 

 

Now we need to get the Parameters that the report is prompting for

 

How to get the Report Parameters

 

Right Click on the Report, and Select View

 

It will take you to the report viewer, at which point it will prompt you for the parameters it needs

 

 

Note the names that it is prompting for.  The main report is prompting for “PoNumber” While the Subreport is prompting for “CheckNUM” (and the reason that we know it is a sub-report is because it is wrapped around in parenthesis)
Now that we know what parameters we need, is time to build our URL

 

How To build the Report URL

 

All report URLS will begin with http://mycrystalserverurl/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.aspx?

 

If we visit this url, you will see that Crystal gives an error that says

obviously we need to let the viewer know which report to load, so that’s what the ID is for, so now if we go to  http://mycrystalserverurl/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.aspx?idocid=9767 (9767 being the ID we gathered before)

 

We now get the same parameter prompt that we had above, but the Goal here is to automatically pass the parameters to the report, so that’s where the “lsS” variable comes in to play

 

By adding the parameter in the form of lsSPARAMETERNAME, we now see that the report only prompts for the parameter in the sub report http://mycrystalserverurl/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.aspx?idocid=9767&lsSPONumber=2150

 

But simply adding lsSPARAMETERNAME  wont target the parameter in the sub-report.  In order to do that, you need to add something to the lsS variable.  It needs to be in the form of lsSPARAMETERNAME@SUBREPORTNAME.  Notice the “@” symbol, it is important to include it along with the name of the sub-report, otherwise crystal won’t know where to set the variable

 

So now, we have our complete URL that looks like this:

http://mycrystalserverurl/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.aspx?idocid=9767&lsSPONumber=2150&lsSCheckNUM@checkSummary=5560

 

Notice that the name of the sub-report in the lsS variable must match whatever the name was in the parenthesis.  So now we have a url that once clicked, it will take you to the report viewer ready to view the report

 

But wait, what about promptOnRefresh, ah yes, well, that parameter is pretty self explanatory, but I will explain it anyway.  When you created your report, you made it to prompt you for the parameters which we pre-filled with the lsSVariableName, but If your user clicks on the refresh button, they will be prompted for the parameters again.  If you set promptOnRefresh to “0”, then even if the user hits the refresh button, they will not get prompted again for the parameters.  The report will always continue to use the original parameters that were passed to it in the URL.

Here is a sample URL with promptOnRefresh:
http://mycrystalserverurl/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.aspx?idocid=9767&lsSPONumber=2150&lsSCheckNUM@checkSummary=5560&promptOnRefresh=0

 

That’s all, now you are a Crystal Server URL reporting expert 🙂

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Error Adding Reports To Crystal Reports Server

9 years
by in Technology

So I was Trying to add reports to Crystal Reports Server through the CMC, and I was getting an error that was not letting me upload the reports.  Adding the report via InfoView did not work either, InfoView only gave you a “time out” error but I suspect in the background, it was the same as the error I was getting through the CMC

The Error Reads:

So of course, I check out the SAP support forums, and most questions, if not all questions that I found went unanswered and unresolved.  The SAP Notes (The Paid Support) were no help either.

After much troubleshooting, this is what I came up with to fix the issue:

  • Open up the report in Crystal Reports 
  • From the Menu pick File -> Page Setup
  • Select the check box that says “No Printer (Optimized for screen display)”

And that’s all there is to it, once you do that, “reportadd.exe” wont error out anymore.  I guess this is some issue with the Crystal Report File format, but whatever the case, this is a quick and painless fix for me.

 

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