Articles - Joel Lipman .Com

MySQL day of week ending on Friday

: Joel Lipman; MySQL; 26 April 2012; Hits: 9551

What?
Week Ending Date has been requested a lot more frequently now. It's an odd one but the example below shows how to do this for when the week ends on Friday. Assuming it starts on the previous Saturday.

Why?
Problems with MySQL weeks always starting on Sunday means this isn't very useful. I have another system which starts on Monday and ends on the following Sunday. The solution below is for the opposite, where the week starts on the previous Saturday and ends on the last working day of the week.

The Solution

: Joel Lipman; Team Foundation Server; 08 March 2012; Hits: 29574

What?
I installed Business Intelligence Development Studio 2008 (BIDS) and connected it to a Team Foundation Server 2010 (TFS) instance and set my working local folder to my home directory. When the rest of my colleagues installed it however, they decided to use a common local directory for all workstations so configuration files would not need to be modified.

So?
Once installed, my BIDS install would continuously check-out files and store these in the home directory. I tried the general settings (Tools > Options) but to no avail.

How?

: Joel Lipman; Personal Home Page; 31 January 2012; Hits: 5332

What?
This is intended for activity/session durations and although I usually get MySQL to do the date/time calculations, there are times when we have to do with PHP. This is the shortest way I know to properly convert seconds into total hours, minutes and seconds (taking into account regional settings and without using a date function).

How?

copy raw

$total_time =intval(intval($total_seconds)/ 3600).":";
$total_time.=str_pad(intval(($total_seconds/60)%60),2,"0",STR_PAD_LEFT).":";
$total_time.=str_pad(intval($total_seconds%60),2,"0",STR_PAD_LEFT);

// yields
// 82800  = 23:00:00
// 108000 = 30:00:00

$total_time =intval(intval($total_seconds)/ 3600).":";
$total_time.=str_pad(intval(($total_seconds/60)%60),2,"0",STR_PAD_LEFT).":";
$total_time.=str_pad(intval($total_seconds%60),2,"0",STR_PAD_LEFT);
// yields
// 82800 = 23:00:00
// 108000 = 30:00:00

On one line:

copy raw

$total_time=intval(intval($total_seconds)/ 3600).":".str_pad(intval(($total_seconds/60)%60),2,"0",STR_PAD_LEFT).":".str_pad(intval($total_seconds%60),2,"0",STR_PAD_LEFT);

$total_time=intval(intval($total_seconds)/ 3600).":".str_pad(intval(($total_seconds/60)%60),2,"0",STR_PAD_LEFT).":".str_pad(intval($total_seconds%60),2,"0",STR_PAD_LEFT);

Category: Personal Home Page :: Article: 413

No rows returned in Oracle causes SP to fail

: Joel Lipman; Oracle PL/SQL; 24 January 2012; Hits: 8724

Why?
We have a stored procedure which contains two select queries. The first query will retrieve a student ID number where the input parameter is the student's username. The second query will return data using the student ID number found in the first query. The stored procedure compiles successfully and without any warnings.

So What?
The problem is that if the student does not have a username but has an ID number, then the first query returns NO ROWS and then the second query errors and the whole stored procedure fails. The same problem happens when using these as a subquery which has an empty result set.

Furthermore
I am using this stored procedure in a SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) environment and don't want to return any rows if there are no matches (not a blank row either) as one of my reports uses a row counter to display a "No data found" message when no rows are returned. This does not affect the above problem as the stored procedure simply fails and discontinues processing the overall report.

How?
Browsing the web for a solution, most suggest using NVL() but this only replaces a NULL value with a string of your choice; and even if you NVL all returned fields, no rows are returned, and not a row of NULL/blank/empty values. Sounds confusing? That's just me, the answer was using two NVL functions which allowed the stored procedure to return no rows without erroring (ie. where rownum/rowcount = 0).

: Joel Lipman; SQL Server Reporting Services; 19 January 2012; Hits: 40756

What?
So I've spent a fun time googling and binging but still haven't found a simple and complete example of getting a resultset from an Oracle stored procedure and displaying this in SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). Well "non-productive" more than "fun" as most of the examples on the net are either half-complete or partially documented. So here goes...

Using Business Intelligence Development Studio v2008 (BIDS)
SQL Server Reporting Services v2008 R2 (SSRS)
Oracle SQL Developer v3 (you can use any equivalent, eg. SQL*Plus)

Why?
I think this is one of those very rare occasions that Microsoft people can say "it's so much easier using a Microsoft product to work with another Microsoft product" (ie "Seamless integration"). Yes, I'm trying to get an SSRS report to display the results from an Oracle stored procedure. I have a previous article describing a basic stored procedure in Oracle, this article aims to outline how to apply this to an SSRS 2008 R2 report.

: Joel Lipman; Oracle PL/SQL; 16 January 2012; Hits: 12488

Previously
For a basic Oracle function, visit my article Basic Oracle Function Structure. For a more advanced version which uses cursors to work with SSRS, see my article Oracle Stored Procedures in SSRS.

What?
I asked someone for a simple, easy and basic Oracle stored procedure as my MySQL and T-SQL stored procedures work slightly differently and are easier to pull off. After much umming and aah-ing, I have written this article as a note for me to demo a working stored procedure and how to use cursors. I'm told I need to use this for SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) which is why I'm going down this route. For an even simpler stored procedure, I'd imagine you just get rid of the cursor.

Why
A standalone query is faster in the eyes of SSRS, however within SSRS we don't have the capability to run standard PL/SQL commands... unless they're run from within a stored procedure. Our aim is to run a small query first to return the ID of the student, and then to use this number in a second query which we're hoping will be quicker than a straightforward table join.

: Joel Lipman; Oracle PL/SQL; 15 January 2012; Hits: 10000

What?
I need to refer to how to create a function in Oracle PL/SQL and sites on the net just attempt to overcomplicate everything and have forgotten how it is to be new to Oracle. I need a function in it's simplest form and if I want to torture my successors, I'll complicate the function myself.

How?
Functions are supposed to return a single value, which is all I need in this case. In my example, I need to submit an Active Directory (AD) username and receive a student ID number instead, all with the aim to improve performance on some SSRS queries which accept either an ID number or an AD name as user parameters.

Syntax:

copy raw

CREATE [OR REPLACE] FUNCTION function_name
    [ (parameter [,parameter]) ]

    RETURN return_datatype

IS | AS
    [declaration_section]

BEGIN
    executable_section

[EXCEPTION
    exception_section]

END [function_name];

CREATE [OR REPLACE] FUNCTION function_name
[ (parameter [,parameter]) ]
RETURN return_datatype
IS | AS
[declaration_section]
BEGIN
executable_section
[EXCEPTION
exception_section]
END [function_name];

Category: Oracle PL/SQL :: Article: 409

: Joel Lipman; MySQL; 02 January 2012; Hits: 8199

What?
I have a mySQL database table of room assets that has a field containing the ID numbers of images relevant to this room.

The Problem?
When I select specifying the statement "WHERE IN (c.RoomImages)", this is interpreted as a string and when converted to a number only retrieves the first value before the first comma. Consider the following, the first query is how MySQL interprets the query and the second is what I want it to do:

copy raw

SELECT value FROM my_table WHERE my_id IN ('1, 2, 3')
SELECT value FROM my_table WHERE my_id IN ('1', '2', '3')

SELECT value FROM my_table WHERE my_id IN ('1, 2, 3')
SELECT value FROM my_table WHERE my_id IN ('1', '2', '3')

Category: MySQL :: Article: 408

: Joel Lipman; SQL Server Reporting Services; 14 December 2011; Hits: 24701

What?
I have created an SSRS report which can compare 4 reports side by side and brings up their latest execution times to the nearest millisecond. The report has 4 parameters. Each parameter is a dropdown populated by a list of all available reports.

Why?
I want the report to be run with the 3rd and 4th parameter as OPTIONAL. When I leave the 3rd and 4th parameter untouched (="<Select a value>"), the report complains saying "Report #3 parameter cannot be blank!". Before you ask, I have ticked both "Allow Blank" and "Allow NULL".

How?
This is the tough part. I was reading up on the MSDN page for the closest solution but it still didn't work for me. But the idea of inserting a NULL entry to select sounded good.

Aim / Objective
The plan will be to replace the default "<Select a Value>" with a custom null entry and the end-user will be none the wiser.

: Joel Lipman; MediaWiki; 06 December 2011; Hits: 5878

What?
In not as many words as others, here's my MySQL query to extract details on images stored in the MediaWiki CMS system (v1.14).

Why?
Prior to a migration and just after another change freeze, I had sent all Wiki articles modified since the last export but then needed to send all images that had also been either added/modified since.

How?
Using MySQL, the following query lists the image name, size, user who uploaded, timestamp and the path. Remember that the paths are determined using the MD5 Hash of the filename:

: Joel Lipman; MySQL; 06 December 2011; Hits: 11378

Just putting a note as I have spent ages looking for a solution and getting it to work in my environment.

What?
Need to be able to omit HTML tags in certain fields of a mySQL database.

Why?
We are preparing to migrate old content to a new system. From a MediaWiki CMS to a SaaS called Service-Now. The previous interlinking between images could no longer be used.

: Joel Lipman; SQL Server Reporting Services; 02 December 2011; Hits: 14044

Why?
I've recently written a report for SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 (SSRS) which will compare up to 4 reports and will compare the time taken for each one. The breakdown or what I was able to measure with the default installation are the times taken for "data retrieval", "processing", "rendering", and then the totals of these.

I haven't Googled this at the time of print so there may be a million better solutions out there, this is just how I did it. This may look like a horrible report which would fail an accessibility test but visually it says straight away which is the better report; and when comparing to the previous runs (using a second dataset) you can tell where changes were made and how this affected the reports' performance.

What?
What I'm trying to do is display a set of results (comparing various reports) in a table and then to color the backgrounds based on whether they are the fastest or slowest in the set.

Something like:

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