Reading Access 2010 .mdb files from SQL Server directly

OK, I have already ripped most of my hair out and I DID get it to work with many hours of research and many smart people at the helm online and at my client’s work. This article will save your HOURS I hope. The permissions thing was credit to them. Thanks.

[UPDATE: Feb 2014 – I now used a linked Server to a dB with a password (the with a password is a big deal – googling for a long time finally paid off – whoo hoo it works! See that article too – you will still need this one]

Here are some links I used to get things working. I use the OPENROWSET (see SQL example below) and there are 4 things that are key (this guy saved my bacon so I will link this to give him the most credit). If you have 32 bit office installed on a 64 bit machine etc Continue reading

Repair Windows 8 for black screen with cursor

This paragraph was written long after the issue was solved. I think the black screen was a 2ndary monitor’s view (but we didn’t have a 2ndary monitor). So – first, ensure you have ONLY a digital cable going from your computer to the monitor OR an analog – not both (first things first). Then, if this does not solve it, hold down the WindowsButtton-P and press the down arrow – does something happen? Is it set to the TOP option of Primary Screen? If a pull-out out showed up change it to Primary Screen (top option) So doing a restore point to before the issue will NOT solve it because updates will overwrite this (plus this was too long ago to do a restore point). Another thing that will solidify this (since an update triggered all of this) is to uninstalling the graphics driver AND all the monitors in your Device Manager (not just disable) and doing a reboot (which will reinstall with the latest drivers) seem to solved it for good. I posted here to so you can read this in context.

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Integrating ASP app – Users and more users, more permissions and 401s

When you integrate a site onto its final server – things with windows get hairy. Here are some notes to get out of trouble

  • seeing a 401 for anonymous user? Are your permissions for IUSR set to read, write, execute (ref)? This is for anonymous user. For a dynamic user, then you have to add permissions for NetworkService (see small note in this reference) (6.1 – or see this article for 7.5). For this, I had an account called (built in account: ApplicationPoolIdentity – this not correct – I will keep digging)
    • you might also require the group IIS_IUSRS to have read, write, execute. It depends on your version of IIS (see this link – this is succinct)
    • ensure BOTH the user accessing the page and the AppPoolIdentity user BOTH have NTFS permissions set to the directory and subsequent web pages (reference) Continue reading

Using ZOHO Creator as a front end to ZOHO Reports

Well, it seems that ZOHO Creator has come a ways since last winter. I abandoned using ZOHO Creator which REALLY will someday give Filemaker a run for its money. It is BEYOND incredible what ZOHO has done with their database tool REPORTS which blows MS Access out of the water – and it is web based natively. I am also beyond impressed with their Spreadsheet tool (which has VBA in it – and it works!) and their inter-operability with their own platforms and other people’s platforms.

BUT – it seems that I should re-try ZOHO Creator as a front end to their reports database tables. Lets give it a go – follow along – it is Dec 13th 2013 so this blog article might take a week or so to settle down. Here goes … Continue reading

Relocate WordPress website or folder – straightforward text edits will not do it – tools are required

I found a great article and tool to get started, but it took many attempts to finally move or relocate WordPress website or folder from http://elbsolutions.com/chadtest to the almost final position of http://smartcar.websitewelcome.com/~wccogca . Since it was quite frustrating, I thought I would blog about it for other people who can benefit. Steps were:

  1. get temp website running moved over to final home (from http://www.elbsolutions.com/chadtest to http://smartcar.websitewelcome.com/~wccogca its temporary home before DNS change over)
  2. switch website completely to another (DNS change) and
  3. finalize the website at it’s new home in proper place (proper www address).  but the address will be http://www.wccog.ca – but the files in 2. are in the correct spot already.

With these ideas, I hope you can move your site over as well. Read the comments in the article by Rachel below – I think there are some even easier tools, but this one has some plugins and a theme that made this a bit of a pain.

If there is a typo, please comment so others can benefit from the corrections. It takes a second 🙂 Good luck.

So, first Continue reading

Adding jQuery to Report Services – (Make parameter field bigger is the reason for doing this in this article)

There are really 2 concepts here which is the reason for the long title. First, adding jQuery to Report Services means hacking 2 install files (.aspx files) of Report Services. If you don’t have someone who has access to the server that is hosting the web pages, it might be hard to get this done. Your IT department might say ‘no way’ but this problem is well known for RS 2008 up to the current – so it is really not a risk – if it breaks, simply fix it – most likely it will never need fixing especially if you are using an older version of RS which is by this point mature. Next to address the width – this article helped. Here is how I did it and who helped me (urls in the code and the links above)… Continue reading

Getting info from MS Access

This is a note to keep myself clear on what technology is preferred and when to use it. I understand why programmers use explitives and the F-bomb- MS makes things SOOOO complicated (uninstall and reinstall the 2010 distributable – no matter how ‘installed’ you think it is 🙂 ). Basically Microsoft Access has flip flopped on whether or not ADO or DAO is the preferred choice – here is a history article for interest sake. I used this article to make my choice and they mention lots of other options and details that are good to know. The project is to get MS Access records into AutoCAD tables. It is important to note that ADO and ADO.net are not the same- except the 3 letters. ACEDAO is the latest ADO and DAO is preferred after MS Access 2007 and is re-written from this version onwards. What references to set? I had troubles because my Excel test envuronmnent gave error 429: could not created an active x component. Here is what references worked Continue reading