Using a script to install IIS on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008

If you want to do the full install of SQL server 2005 or SQL server 2008 on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, before you install Reporting service, you need to install IIS first. This is the prerequisite.

Now you can use a script to run the following command in the command prompt.

start /w pkgmgr /iu:IIS-WebServerRole;IIS-WebServer;IIS-CommonHttpFeatures;IIS-StaticContent;IIS-DefaultDocument;IIS-DirectoryBrowsing;IIS-HttpErrors;IIS-HttpRedirect;IIS-ApplicationDevelopment;IIS-ASPNET;IIS-NetFxExtensibility;IIS-ASP;IIS-CGI;IIS-ISAPIExtensions;IIS-ISAPIFilter;IIS-ServerSideIncludes;IIS-HealthAndDiagnostics;IIS-HttpLogging;IIS-LoggingLibraries;IIS-RequestMonitor;IIS-HttpTracing;IIS-CustomLogging;IIS-ODBCLogging;IIS-Security;IIS-BasicAuthentication;IIS-WindowsAuthentication;IIS-DigestAuthentication;IIS-ClientCertificateMappingAuthentication;IIS-IISCertificateMappingAuthentication;IIS-URLAuthorization;IIS-RequestFiltering;IIS-IPSecurity;IIS-Performance;IIS-HttpCompressionStatic;IIS-HttpCompressionDynamic;IIS-WebServerManagementTools;IIS-ManagementConsole;IIS-ManagementScriptingTools;IIS-ManagementService;IIS-IIS6ManagementCompatibility;IIS-Metabase;IIS-WMICompatibility;IIS-LegacyScripts;IIS-LegacySnapIn;IIS-FTPPublishingService;IIS-FTPServer;IIS-FTPManagement;WAS-WindowsActivationService;WAS-ProcessModel;WAS-NetFxEnvironment;WAS-ConfigurationAPI

After a while, IIS features will be installed and you can move on to installing SQL Server.

It is a very useful command.

Windows Live Writer is still not reliable for Blogger Acount

In the blog world, I haven’t found a useful tool where you can easily add your own texts, drag and drop your photos from any location, and publish your articles to your blog successfully. When I heard that Microsoft wants to release a new product, Windows Live Writer many months ago, suddenly in my mind, it will be an excellent product in the future.

My expectation is so easy. It should be user-friendly. It can let users launch Windows Live Writer and add an existing account in blogger.com, spaces.live.com or whatever blog it supports.
Only you can do is to use Windows Live Writer as follows:

1. Add/modify texts.

2. Drag and drop multiple photos from your PC.

3. Modify your photo size that fits your blog.

4. Click “Publish”. Finally you can publish one article with many photos to your blog successfully.

Today I downloaded Windows Live Writer and tested it.

1. The first test: Add some texts, drag and drop one photo. Click “Publish” . Pass!

2. The second test: Add some texts , drag and drop 5 photos. Edit the photo size (width =400). Click “Publish”. No-ops! The following errors show up:

WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Client.XmlrequestHelper....()
WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Client....()


I think the main problem in my test is the photo size. I enter width=400 and it is not in the dropdownlist. But finally I still can't publish one article with multiple photos using the default setting.


I really hope Windows Live Writer Team can make users easily publish articles with multiple photos soon.

Google blog search engine is not reliable.

Everyone knows that Google is very famous for its search engine. But I want to mention one fact: Why is the search engine in blogger.com not so reliable?

Just imagine the situation: After Mary posts a new article in her blog in blogger.com, she wants to search her article. Therefore, she goes to the Google’s official blog search (http://blogsearch.google.com) and enters the key word; unfortunately, she can’t find it. After one hour, she still can’t find it. Even after 1 week, she still can’t find it. Is that user –friendly?

You can also add another search function in your own blog. Just go to
https://draft.blogger.com/draft , copy the codes to your own blog. But in your blog, when you enter the key word to search your articles inside your blog, sometimes it doesn’t work.

What happens to the search engine? Many people will say: you should go to another website to register for your information or you need to wait until people click your articles. That’s the joke!!

User-friendly! User-friendly! User-friendly!

I really hope search engine in blogger.com will be reliable soon!

Choosing a cursor strategy

This is my key note of choosing a cursor strategy when I studied Microsoft 70-442 exam. Hope it can be very helpful for you


.

。

Error 1721: Installing AdventureWorksDB 2008 is not working

Today I went to the following website to download the AdventureWorksDB databases. I wanted to attach it to my SQL Server 2005 in my windows XP with SP2. Finally it was not working for me.

http://www.codeplex.com/MSFTDBProdSamples

When I installed, it had the following error.

Error 1721. There is a program with this windows Installer package. A program required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor. Action: InstallDatabase, location:..\AdventureWorks_log.ldf) FOR ATTACH;”

After the install, the sample files were really under C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100. They were not useful because when I opened SQL Server 2005 and tried to attach it, it didn’t work. There is nothing to do with windows installer package. It proves the latest AdventureWorksDB is only for SQL Server 2008.

If you really want to use it in SQL Server 2005, just download AdventureWorksDB of SQL Server 2005 as follows:

http://www.codeplex.com/MSFTDBProdSamples/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=4004

You can finish your task.

SQL Server 2005 Issue: ERROR 1706 Setup cannot find the required files.

If you have office 2007 in your PC, and you want to install SQL Server 2005, you may have the following error:

ERROR 1706 Setup cannot find the required files. Check your connection to the network, or CD ROM! For other potential solutions to this problem, see c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\1033\Setup.chm

You must download Office 2003 web components first and then you can install SQL Server 2005 successfully.

Comments on Using Picasa- One interesting issue!

2 months ago, I read one of the articles in PC Magazine that introduced one of Google’s free software, Picasa. I found it was so interesting and useful that I told Christine to download and gave it a try because she likes to try some useful software such as Photoshop, InDesgin , Photo Impact, etc.

After she downloaded and launched Picasa, she followed its instruction. Finally she regretted. Picasa made her PC down. She swore that she will never use it in the future. What happened to her PC?

This is a good interesting issue I like to mention here.

When you use Picasa for the first time, it has the small dialog box which lets you scan your photos. You cannot say no. But when you click “yes”, it will automatically scan all of your pictures in your hard drive. If you have many pictures in different folders, but the total storage is more than 40 GB, do you think it will finish scanning as soon as possible?

If you have many digital photos in your hard drive like Christine, will you use Picasa as your tool in your PC? I don’t believe so.

I don’t know why Picasa wants to scan all of the pictures in the beginning. Why not add another function to let users add directories later?

I hope they can improve this function in the future!

How to Use Auto Logon in Windows Server 2003?

Why do we use auto logon in Windows Server 2003? People will say: It is not secure, and I don’t want to use it. I will say: This function is so useful, but only for the specific purpose such as testing and some automated jobs.

Just imagine that if you want to run some automated jobs, but they will cause the reboot, will you spend time waiting in front of your PC in order to manually logon to your PC and move on to the next step? Probably not.

What if these jobs cause the reboot many times? Do you still want to wait? Therefore, the best way is to use auto logon!

How do we configure the function of auto logon? It is so simple as follows:

1. Click Start, run, and enter regedit.

2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. You can see AutoAdminLogon and DefaultUserName.

3. Just create a name DefaultPassword and add your password.

4. Just set AutoAdminLogon=1.

Next time when you restart your PC, it will automatically logon to your PC.

The only disadvantage is that when someone logons to your PC, he can know your password in the registry key. So be careful when you want to use this function.

Do we really need a foreign key in the table?

If you worked on database design before and now I ask you a question:
“Do we really need a foreign key in the table?” , you will definitely say: Of course!
Foreign keys are important in database design. We need to follow normalization(First normal form, Second normal form and third normal from).

If you get a chance to ask Database Administrators in large companies, they might tell you: we don’t want foreign keys.

Is this the big conflict between SAs and DBAs?

Just imagine one situation:

If ABC Company has a famous website that sells many products to customers, their network traffic is very heavy. When customers place orders and want to receive their orders as soon as possible, how can ABC Company handle it?

ABC must have many database servers, but the data on the main server needs to be replicated to other servers quickly. Only 3-5 minutes, the data must be updated automatically and they can ship the products quickly. If the network traffic is so heavy and many tables have many foreign keys, the replication will be very slow and might cause failure.

Just imagine another situation:

Many companies have the daily build or weekly milestone build for developers and testers to test if their products are reliable. If there are so many tables including so many foreign keys in the database, how can DBAs setup the new build as soon as possible? If they can’t set it up immediately, many people will say: they block my task. No wonder that many DBAs say: Foreign keys are the burden of replication.


In the real world, you can have many chances to see if my opinion is right. Do we really need a foreign key in the table? Obviously, it depends on the situation.

I will say:

No replication, need foreign keys.
Need replication, no foreign keys.

My ideal blogger.com —user friendly functions are the best.

Blogger.com seems very popular now. Many people want to give it a try.

When I use it, I should say: blogger.com doesn’t provide user-friendly functions for users. Some special functions need time to search; some are in other domain websites. They assume that users are professional and will find the functional answers by themselves. Do they really spend a lot of time searching the information and just add those functions to their blogs? Probably not.

My ideal blogger.com is just simple. Blogger .com should collect useful user-friendly functions and users can add them directly. They don’t need to know HTML/JavaScript. They don’t have to worry about those functions so much.

What are people’s useful functions now in their blog?

1. Provide many useful templates of 2 columns or multiple columns directly.

2. Provide functions of showing visitor counts, recent posts, recent comments, and recent articles.

3. Provide functions of showing article categories, article search, my subscriptions and horoscope directly.

4. Provide functions of calendar, weather, google map, oil price..etc.

5. Provide the function of uploading multiple photos to the blog one time. Copying texts and photos from Microsoft Word or Google documents to the blog is also the best way.

Are these functions basic?

I want to mention: User friendly! User friendly! User friendly!

No HTML/JavaScript.Users have no time to search.

I really hope that blogger.com can know what users need and what they want.

I really hope those basic functions should be realized in the upcoming days.