Microsoft Jet Engine 64-bit and dbdesc 3.0.2
September 25th, 2008First of all, there’s no 64-bit edition of the Microsoft Jet Engine and it seems never will be. So when I received this error from a user using Vista 64 I panicked…
The ‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′ provider is not registered on the local machine.
Last month I released a dbdesc version for 64-bit OS. It had some third-party libraries (read Firebird) targeting 64-bit.
When you target ‘Any CPU’ in a .NET application your app will be loaded using the “native” platform of the system. In XP/Vista 64 it will be loaded as a 64 bit application, which means that it expects to load 64 libraries. It cannot load a 32 bit-only libraries like the Microsoft Jet Engine. That’s the same reason why I needed to update the Firebird libraries to the 64-bit version and generate a new installer for dbdesc.
The solution is now clear. Dbdesc has to target the x86 platform. This way, I don’t need to use special 64-bit build of any third-party library and the same code will run fine on both 32 and 64 bit OS. For a relative small app like dbdesc, there’s no visible performance loss.
So, dbdesc 3.0.2 is out. This time just one installer; no matter which OS you run.
Great!
dbdesc 3.0.1 (64-bit OS support)
August 13th, 2008I’ve just released a new version of dbdesc for Windows XP x64 and Windows Vista x64. Even though the core of dbdesc is not tied to a specific architecture, some of the libraries that dbdesc needs (Firebird and others) are processor-dependent. So if you are running a 64-bit OS, now there is a specific installer for you.
Also some minor bugs got fixed in this version.
I’ve added the link on the download page.
Documenting SQL Server 2008 RC0 databases
July 15th, 2008One of my customers asked me yesterday if dbdesc 3.0 supports SQL Server 2008 databases.
The answer is yes, dbdesc works just fine with SQL Server 2008 RC0 and even documents the new data types.
There is however a small issue… it won’t script tables. The current version of SMO does not support SQL Server 2008 databases and even though there is a workaround using DMO, I prefer to wait until the RTM version.
dbdesc 3.0 is ready… to document more databases!
July 14th, 2008After some time without new features, just bug fixes and maintenance releases, I’m happy to announce that dbdesc 3.0 is ready.
This new version comes with two major new features and several improvements:
- Support for MySQL 5.0 databases
- A Table Dependency Matrix is automatically generated which makes very easy to “see” the relationships between tables
Additionally, your credentials and database lists are now stored per server, which means less typing when documenting databases in different servers.
The extended properties editor has been improved too. Now it allows you to add descriptions to foreign key constraints, users and roles.
As usual, all these improvements are free for registered customers.
Please note that dbdesc 3.0 requires .NET Framework 2.0. I think that .NET 2.0 is widely spread now so it shouldn’t be a problem for anyone. I’ll be supporting dbdesc 2.2 too (which runs with .NET 1.1), even though no new features will be added, just bug fixes.
dtsdoc customer testimonial
May 21st, 2008From time to time some dbdesc/dtsdoc user sends me a brief note about how satisfied he is with my products. I really appreciate those comments as they push me forward. I often ask them for permission to quote them and put a testimonial in the website.
A few days ago I’ve received a great email from Hugo Toledo, a long time dtsdoc customer. This time I’ve decided to share it with you here:
Hello folks,
I wanted to share with you another recent dtsdoc-based success.
We have had to go back and analyze a transformation problem in an older application. Thanks to dtsdoc we were able to very, very quickly determine that a typo had occurred during a recent and, one would think, minor update.
Without dtsdoc this could have taken hours and, because of the tedium of the effort, we may very well have missed a few more places where it occurred.
Thanks, again!
Hugo Toledo
Principal
Chateaux Software
dtsdoc 1.2.3 maintenance release
April 17th, 2008I’ve just released a maintenance version of dtsdoc.
Now the DTS call tree image automatically increases its width so package names don’t wrap. It makes the image easier to read.
This version also adds a new version of the HTML_Images XSL template which presents the packages ordered alphabetically and fixes a small error in the templates.
Feel free to download this update from the download page. The installer will automatically upgrade any previous version of dtsdoc.
Diagnose SQL Server 2005 SP2 install problems
March 28th, 2008I was checking the pending updates in one of my test VISTA machines and the SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 was still in the list. I tried to install it using Windows Update but it returned an error: Error code 2B22.
The link Get Help didn’t bring any help as the error code was not in the list. So I googled for it. Surprisingly I get very few results and most of them were the same Microsoft forum post republished by others sites. The post was simply someone asking for help and a couple of ‘me too’ responses.
Anyway, I needed more info about the problem so I looked for a log in my system. I’ve founded it in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\LOG\Hotfix
The file you want to look at is Summary.txt which holds the log of the last update. You may see other files like Summary_0.txt, Summary_1.txt … Summary_N.txt. Those contain information about past updates.
As you can see in the image, the installer was not able to start the service. (Note that the error number here is 11402; 2B22 in decimal). After checking the service properties, it turned out that it was configured to run under a user account which password had changed recently. I fixed the problem and run the update again.
Once more, the update didn’t succeed. This time the error code was 780. However, now I knew where to look to diagnose the problem:
The service SQL Server VSS Writer (SQLWriter) was disabled. Changing the Start Up property to Manual did the trick. Finally the Service Pack 2 install succeeded.
dbdesc and dtsdoc review at ASP Alliance
December 6th, 2007
Richard Dudley has published a full review of my database documentation tool, dbdesc, and the SQL Server DTS documenter, dtsdoc. Here is the article abstract:
“I am a fan of simple tools which work well and save me a lot of time. Two of my “new best friends” are Logica2’s sister programs dtsdoc, which documents SQL Server DTS packages, and dbdesc, which documents SQL Server schemas. The documentation is complete and generated quickly, and both programs have found a lasting place in my SQL Server toolkit.”
The article is a very good introduction to both products. Thanks Richard for the positive comments.
How to reduce the size of your MSI installer
October 1st, 2007I use WiX to build the installer packages for dbdesc and dtsdoc. Today, I’ve reduced the size of both installers by 20%. How?
It turns out that the WiX tutorial states it clearly:
We also have to include the icon we want to use in the shortcuts. Note that the Id identifier has to carry the same extension as the target file, in this case, .exe:
<icon Id=”Foobar10.exe” SourceFile=”FoobarAppl10.exe” />
This will store the source file separately in the final installation package (so, if you refer to your main executable, you will end up with two copies). If the size of the file is large enough to cause concern, create a small .exe or .ico containing nothing but the icons.
(Emphasis mine)
Of course, I was extracting the icon directly from my executable. That is 550 KB for dbdesc and 280 KB for dtsdoc. In fact, it was much worse, because I had an additional reference to the executable for a second icon. The net result is that I was adding one additional megabyte to the dbdesc installer and about 500 KB to dtsdoc.
So, remember to reference directly an icon instead of your executable and you will save bandwidth and download time.
dbdesc 2.2 ready
September 20th, 2007I’ve just uploaded a new version of dbdesc. This version adds some useful features that I’m sure many of you will love.
The first one addresses a common scenario: Your database has hundreds of tables, views and stored procedures. You need to provide the database documentation to someone (a developer team, a client, etc.) but she only needs to know about part of your database. So you manually select and deselect individual objects and generate the documentation. So far so good.
The problem here is that chances are that you’ll need to generate that documentation for her in the future, what means that you’ll need to select and deselect those same objects again. Not fun.
Dbdesc 2.2 allows you to save object selections, as many as you need. To save the current selection, just give it a name. Saved selections show up right in the advanced form.
Another main new feature, that I hope will improve in upcoming versions, it’s the ability to customize the internal report. As you know, dbdesc has two report engines. One of them is based on XSL templates which allow you to fully control the contents, design and format of the documentation. The other one is a third-party report component which generates nice reports ready to be printed.
Until now, using the report component, you could choose only between three different style sheets to change the appearance of the report and they were limited, basically, to change font colors. Now, dbdesc includes a style sheet editor that will allow you to modify not only the colors of the report but to change the cover page, include you company logo, change the headers and footers, modify fonts, etc. Hopefully this will help you match the style of these reports to your corporate look and feel.
This version includes more features and improvements that you can check in the change log.
As always, I’ll appreciate any comments or suggestions. Please send me your comments.
