Victor Raj - CSIS Blogs

Microsoft Access Stopped Working

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 09:06:05 -0500

This message started popping suddenly after my Access front-end for a SQL Server 2005 backend database got too big. Apparently this is activated when the number of objects (tables/forms/reports etc) exceeds some mystery threshold. You won't be able to do ANYTHING. As always, there are many solutions depending on what actually caused this generic message.

The one that worked for me - nicely I might add - was DECOMPILE.

<path to file> /decompile

This has to be done from the command prompt (Press Start and enter cmd and press enter). If the file or folders in the path contain spaces, enclose the <path to file> in quotes.

Jennifer Marsman visits Murray State

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 08:35:27 -0600

Microsoft's "Developer Evangelist" - Jennifer Marsman - came in at the combined invitation of the West Kentucky Dot Net Users' group and the Murray State Women in Computing/Technology on Thursday, October 21. She stayed on for one more day and visited several classes to share her enthusiasm and love for technology and Microsoft.

Roundabout-U interviewed her while she was on campus. See Jennifer's post on her blog for details

No Current Record in Access

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:16:23 -0500

Ran into this error when my back-end database crashed on my application. I would be able to view the first record, but as soon as I went to the next record using either the navigation bar or the combo-box I use to find records I would get this error: "No current record"

Looked at the results of numerous google searches and found Allen Browne's solution quite handy. However none of his tips included my situation: failure while viewing data.

Turns out I simply had to relink my tables!

Sometimes simple solutions always evade us. I spent quite a few hours before I got to this. Hope it works for you!

Invalid character value for cast specification

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:57:29 -0500

Ran into "invalid character value for cast specification" error after I changed the data type for one of the field in my SQL Server 2008 database.

Environment
SQL Server 2005 backend
Access 2007 front-end

I changed a datetime field to char in SQL Server because (1) I didn't plan on any data manipulation with this field and (2) the data was coming in as text (255) from a CSV file. Basically I did not want to mess with the CAST/CONVERT functions.

Immediately after making this change, the form using that data wouldn't load. This became a headache when it didn't load even after removing the field from the form.

Google searches revealed everything from blanks in the source column, conversion issues to invalid dates, service packs and hotfixes.

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Alice computer-science teaching tool at the forefront of Girls’ STEM Day at MSU

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:48:29 -0500

Dr. Brenda Wilson, associate professor in Murray State University’s department of computer science and information systems, will present a program on the Alice computer-science teaching tool at the Oct. 21 Girls’ STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) Day on campus.

Read the whole story here

Drupal installation - Database configuration failed

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:44:44 -0500

I tried installing Drupal on our Linux box to see why some of my students were having all kinds of problems. The database was created, the user had adequate privileges and yet the installation script never went past asking for the database information. So I went back to first principles (that is, "read the directions"!).

The documentation had instructed that I "make a copy of the default.settings.php file" and name it "settings.php" or create an empty file with that name. I simply renamed it. Big mistake! Apparently the "installer uses this file as a template to create your settings file using the details you provide through the install process"

Moving a Joomla site to another host in 10 easy steps

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:19:30 -0500

Moving a complex web-site (especially after you configured it with all fancy extensions) can seem foreboding to the average newbie. With the right set of tools, this can be accomplished quite easily. I moved my Joomla 1.5 site from host A (source) to host B (destination) with very little trouble

In the Host A installation, get Joomlapack and install it like any joomla component [Note: New name is "Akeeba Backup"]

open the component and choose "configuration"

Enter the output directory location and press apply at the top right

Click "Backup now" link (above "common settings")

Use your control panel or FTP client to go to the saved location and download the ZIP to your local computer (note where you saved it!)

Use a suitable tool (FTP client, host B's file manager etc) to upload and unzip the file downloaded in previous step. For simplicity, do this in the ROOT location

Create a new MySQL Database and database user through HOST B's control panel (Need this for next step). Be sure to associate the new user to the new database

Open the installation folder in HOST B site (www.hostb.com/installation/index.php)

Provide the new database name, database user, password etc

The wizard will help you complete the process and you are done

I was able to move the entire installation to a different folder through Host B's file manager (to a sub folder from root). All I had to change was the paths to the new location in configuration.php

If you need more detailed information, please check out the authors' user manual [Note: "Joomlapack" is now "Akeeba Backup Core"; it is still free.]

Good luck!

Distributing copies of SQL Server database

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 19:46:32 -0500

There are many ways to copy and distribute a SQL server database to multiple users. In an academic setting, you have to constrain the students' access to just their database. That is, they usually don't have enough privileges to create databases. So, they cannot attach databases. In such cases, you have to jump through some hoops to make the distribution of the sample database possible. Some of these are listed here

Import the database into an empty Microsoft Access database through ODBC and share the Access DB with the class. The students can import it back into their SQL server database
Use the Publishing Wizard. I found this tool VERY handy as it creates the SQL you need to create all the tables and data. This blog post at Systems Engineering and RDBMS details how you can get this tool (in case you don't already have it) and call it from the command line to script just the data, just the schema or both

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Windows authentication failed for local SQL server 2005 instance

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:22:29 -0500

Due to Campus Security policy, we are required to change our domain passwords periodically. This killed my access to the local instance of SQL server 2005 because the server does not start if the password (stored locally) does not match the domain password. So..

Go to SQL Server 2005 service (through Configuration Manager)
Select the "Properties" of the SQL server instance (rt-click teh instance)
Change the login password to the (new) domain password and press apply
Now start the service.
... and all will be well

Malware - urlseek20.vmn.net

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:44:48 -0500

Over the years I have used PDF creator to create PDF documents on-the-fly. Since then other similar products would appear higher on the google searches (cute PDF, primo pdf etc) that essentially delivered similar results for the same price - free (of course!) - and I switched to different products on different computers. However, PDFForge was myfavorite.

About 6 months after buying a new computer, I decided to track down and install PDF Creator. This time it came with a search toolbar that I chose not to install. Shortly thereafter, when using a tabbed flash form, I was taken to urlseek20.vmn.net with a "404" error every time I clicked a tab. Interestingly this happened only in Firefox (I have 3.0.7) and not in IE.

Given that it had never happened before, I started killing processes that seemed suspicious. I also downloaded and installed Spybot, AdAware and some other tools recommended for removing malware. Running these programs did not reveal any infection.

Removal: Out of desperation I started removing programs that I wasn't using starting with the newest installs. Removing the PDFforge toolbar (from Add/remove programs) seems to fix this instantly. I hope it does not reinstall itself again. It remains to be seen! If this is indeed the case, I hope they will identify and fix it ASAP. Their website assures me that their software is "100% clean" as certified by "soft82.com". Who knows?!

Hopefully this post helps others in the same boat. Removing malware is cumbersome to say the least.

Dynamically selecting a tab in flash forms

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:52:25 -0500

Environment: IIS and Coldfusion 8.

How do you direct the user to a specific tab if the data (logically) requires you to?

I was assigning students to a competition event, but if the student pool was empty, the user should be taken directly to the "Add Student" tab. The underlying principle: "When possible, minimize the user's keystrokes/mouseclicks."

Since this was a flash form, I searched the asfusion site, but came away empty. After some frustrating experimentation, I came up with this 2-step solution.. (there may be better ones out there)

Create a textbox to store the record count ("records")
Use a regular expression to update the selectedIndex attribute of the CFFORMGROUP for the tabnavigator

<cfformgroup type="tabnavigator" id="tabs" selectedIndex = "{records.text==0?2:0}">

Note: (1) The "type" for the input box ("records") cannot be "hidden". However, if you use CFINPUT, you can change the "visible" attribute to "false" (2) Tab numbering starts at 0. So the second tab will be "1".

CFGRID, HREF and Flash

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:06:10 -0500

Environment: Coldfusion 8, IIS

While working with Coldfusion on an internal project, I found that Flash forms can be your wonderful friend as well as a scary nightmare. The students love it for the ease-of-use part. But the obstacles are sometimes hard to cross without a decent understanding of JavaScript and/or Action Script. One of these is the ability to link from a row/cell in a grid to display a dynamically filtered page. My google searches with the above title as search terms took me to a lot of posts that simply said, "it cannot be done directly". The trick is to use some ActionScript in the onChange Event of CFGRID
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The List - Open Source apps to try

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:12:32 -0600

In the last couple of weeks we have been experimenting with a variety of open source products that will introduce interested members of the department to building and using web applications on the cheap. We started with identifying and installing a suitable "WAMP suite". This was further expanded with the installation of a simple CMS - one that I hadn't even tried before. In that sense it was a good test for ease-of-installation.

At this point, I will recommend switching to a regular shared host provider as you should have enough experience working with MySQL and PhpMyAdmin - a pre-requisite for anything you do with a W/LAMP environment. Or, you can install the WAMP suite on your local hard-drive and experiment away. My hope was to prime the participant(s) for further exploration. Dr. Lyle will help you get set up with an account on our Linux server that can now be used to try the products I am going to list below.
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Your first CMS - Content Management System

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:50:29 -0600

Trying to cram an application into a 500MB "stick" is proving to be a bit challenging! During the first seminar - before the ice storm hit us - we successfully implemented a "webserver-on-a-stick". The tested suite was "EasyPhP". I have since tried a few more, fixed (understood?) some issues and have settled on "Vertrigo".

One of these was:
Warning: require(Smarty.class.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream:

Turns out that the drive letter for my USB had changed from G to F. Changing a few config files solved this. There were others that have been briefly documented in my previous post.

Today, we will create our first CMS. A good place to start is: http://cmsmatrix.org/ . This site lists quite a few CMS products - both free and commercial - that are available. It even rates these along several dimensions.

Pick one you like
Go to the web site and review the requirements
Download the file
Extract it to the "www" folder
Locate the readme and install directions and follow them

The rest is trouble shooting! I chose "Jaws" because it was rated well and seems reasonable small. But it comes as a tar.gz file. You will need 7-zip to extract this.

Good luck!

WAMP - web server on a stick

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:39:15 -0600

Earlier this semester, I was suggesting some changes to the STARRS lab (BB454) for Dr. Lyle to implement. I was wanting students to be able to explore web servers and their configuration in a safe setting. Dr Lyle responded to my quick demo of one such product - WAMP server - by saying, "Rather than making this available in the lab, why not let students carry their own web server in thumb drives?"

I had not tried this and so began my adventure with portable web servers.

A google search for "portable web server" retrieves numerous excellent candidates. After trying (links at end) uniserver, pampa, XAMPP,vertrigo, easyPhp and WAMP server, I settled on EasyPhP and VertrigoServ. All of the suites installed without problems. They differed in the amount of space they needed and the sophistication of their user interface. Later, I ran into other "nice" suites that give flexibility in "rolling your own" suite (MoWeS portable)

Vertrigo tray menu

In this post, I document my experience with Vertrigo (in the lab, we checked out EasyPhP). The installed package takes up roughly 75MB of disk space. Once launched, a Vertrigo icon appears in the windows tray to facilitate easy management. From here, the user can launch various components/tools, stop/restart the web server, edit configuration files and get help easily. Users can also go to the home page (localhost) directly.

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