Merged colums in Excel exporting

I ran into a situation today that when I export a report to Excel there are unwanted merged columnns. After some digging I came across this post. It was very helpful.

http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisbal/archive/2006/07/08/659545.aspx

Compare Strings in MDX

"using the MDX filter () function and the vba text functions you have plenty of search possibilities

filter (DimName.children, instr(DimName.currentmember.Properties("Name"),"MyValue")>0"

The full post is at:
http://www.developmentnow.com/g/112_2004_3_0_0_407650/MDX-equivalent-to-SQL-LIKE-operator.htm

Warehouse and Cube Changes in TFS 2010

The over view:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sunder/archive/2009/05/16/team-foundation-server-2010-relational-warehouse-and-cube-schema-changes.aspx

How the existing reports are affected:
http://blogs.msdn.com/aaronbjork/archive/2009/05/18/team-foundation-server-2010-where-are-my-reports.aspx

Reports update from 2008 to 2010:
http://www.socha.com/blogs/john/2009/05/upgrading-visual-studio-team-foundation.html

Pass Parameters via URL

I had to do some research to find out why my URLs did work. In short, the URL should point to http://localhost/ReportServer/ instead of http://localhost/Reports/, which is the Report Manager. Here is the post that helped:
http://dobrzanski.net/2008/08/11/reporting-services-problem-with-passing-parameters-directly-in-the-url/

Here is another good post about passing multivalued parameters:
http://bobp1339.blogspot.com/2007/10/passing-ssrs-report-parameters-in-url.html

Execution Policy Issue When Running a PowerShell Script from Team Build

I was trying to run a Powershell script as a step in a Team Build. To do that, I created the Powershell script, and called it in Team Build via an EXEC task. The execution policy was set to Unrestricted on the build server manully. I kept running into the permission error when the build ran ("cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. ").

After strugging with it for two days, I decided to put the set-executionpolicy in the Team Build to set the execution policy on the fly. And that fixed the problem.

Why did that work? After some digging (basically adding another powershell command to find out what the current user is.), the Team Build uses the same service account as the one we remote desktop in and set the policy manually. So the only theory that can explain that is the same account has different security settings in team build and remote desktop in. I still need to prove that.

PowerShell Stuff

Ping a server and get results:
***************
$ping = new-object System.Net.Networkinformation.Ping
$result = $ping.send("ServerName")
write-host $result.status
***************
Or
***************
$ip =”ServerName”
$qry = ('select statuscode from win32_pingstatus where address="' + $ip + '"')
$rslt = gwmi –query “$qry”
if ($rslt.StatusCode –eq 0) {
write-host “ping worked” -BackgroundColor "Green"
}
else {
write-host “ping failed” -BackgroundColor "Red"
}
***************

Using Custom Assembly in the Report

I was working on a report that requires getting information from a txt file. To do that, I planed to use the custom assembly reference feature in SSRS 2008. And I found a realy simple but useful post that walks through how to get thing setup(http://geekswithblogs.net/shervin/archive/2008/04/28/121712.aspx).

--Update--
1. The rssvPolicy.config file is not located in the Bin folder but one level up. The above post was wrong.
2. Here is a better post.
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/balajiintel/CustomAssemblyinRS06302005081435AM/CustomAssemblyinRS.aspx

So I followed the steps in the post and create a Class Library C# solution. The custom assembly worked fine within its own solution. But after I copied the dll to the Report Designer bin folder and granted FullTrust access in the rssvPolicy.config file, the report couldn't find the file. This was frastrating because there is no error or exception that provides more information for debugging. After hours of digging on the Internet with no progress, I created a VB code snippet that does the same thing as the C# custom assembly. This time I embed the code in the report, hoping to get some different results. And indeed, I got an error:
********************
Build complete -- 0 errors, 0 warnings
[rsRuntimeErrorInExpression] The Value expression for the textrun ‘Textbox1.Paragraphs[0].TextRuns[0]’ contains an error: Request for the permission of type 'System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed.
Preview complete -- 0 errors, 1 warnings
********************

The above error led me to another Microsoft post (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842419), which solved my problem.

Solution:
Add the following code to the class
********************
FileIOPermission filePerm = new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.Read, "C:\TestFile[Put in the actual location of the file.]");
filePerm.Assert();
********************