Troubleshooting on Andrew Bancroft

DotNetZip – Solving Mac Decompression Issues

Sat, 28 Dec 2013 20:55:27 +0000

As part of a ASP.Net Web API service that I’m co-developing, I have gotten familiar with the DotNetZip Library. It’s fantastic. We’re using it to gather up a set of requested files from network storage, package them in a zip archive, and stream them back to a client via a web application.

During testing, things worked great on Windows machines, but the moment we tested using a Mac, we ran into issues.

Synopsis:

Problem: On a Mac, a zip file would be downloaded, but it could not be extracted. Double-clicking the zip file resulted in the creation of a .cpgz file.

Solution: In ASP.Net code, change

HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = “application/zip”

HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = “application/octet-stream”

Problem Details:

A zip archive would download as normal, but as things were wrapping up, Safari would try to decompress the file and it would fail.

Error from Safari’s download manager area:

Furthermore, when attempting to simply extract the files directly using the built in Mac Archive Utility (by double-clicking the zip file), the utility would actually re-archive the file, rather than extract it. The end result was the creation of a .cpgz file. Attempting to decompress that file would result in creating another .zip file, which, when double-clicked, created another .cpgz file, and so on, and so on.

Archive Utility re-archiving the zip file when double-clicked (rather than un-archiving it)

Creation of .cpgz file:

Needless to say, the solution to this problem, though somewhat mysterious, was quite simple for me.

In my ASP.Net code, I was writing the zip file to the Response OutputStream. I had added a content type of “application/zip” to the response. This is what was breaking the zip files on a Mac. Buried in the DotNetZip Library’s forum was a post recommending changing the content type to “application/octet-stream” instead. That single changed fixed the issue for standard zip files!

Solution Details:

Change

HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = “application/zip”

HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = “application/octet-stream”

DataStage Range Lookup Failure – What Gives?

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:52:13 +0000

I just spent the majority of my morning trying to figure out why in the world my range lookup kept failing. Hopefully this will save you some time in troubleshooting your range lookup failures. To cut right to the chase, my resolution involved sorting my reference source prior to doing the lookup. Adding a sort stage with the appropriate sort keys prior to doing the lookup solved my problem. I probably learned this in a training at some point, but I just didn’t retain it. So I learned it again the hard way.

For those who’d like to see a bit more of the details involved, feel free to have a look below.

Scenario:

I have a list of funding transactions in my data pipeline that lack some information, namely, the student’s major at the time he/she was funded. They key phrase there is “at the time he/she was funded”.

To assist in supplementing my fact record (the funding transaction) with this student demographic information, I have constructed a snapshot table in the data warehouse that captures a student’s major as a sort of “slowly changing dimension”. Each time a change in the student’s major is detected, new records are inserted and effective and expiration dates are adjusted. I’d like to supplement my funding record with this student major information by doing a lookup. Here is the information I have to work with, just to be clear:

My source data pipeline starts with my funding transactions. It contains

Student ID (Key)
- Transaction Date (will help me with my lookup)
  - Other columns that aren’t relevant to this particular task
  I also have a slowly changing dimension that tracks a historical record of each student’s major for various time intervals. It contains
- Student ID (Key)
  - Effective Date of the student’s major (will help with lookup)
    - Expiration Date of the student’s major (will help with lookup)
      - Student’s major (the information I want to use to supplement my fact row)
    Range Lookup (My [failing] Setup):
    
    To accomplish my goal of supplementing the fact record with the student’s major, I needed to do a range lookup. Below are sample screenshots of how I was attempting to set things up:
    
    View of the job design surface:
    
    View of Lookup Stage:
    
    Notice that I use StudentID as a key so that I match the funding row to a particular student. Now, to get his/her major at the time they were funded, I do a range lookup on the DateFunded column…
    
    View of Range Lookup on DateFunded:
    
    After compiling the job and running it, I would receive this error message:
    
    Lookup_StudentFieldOfStudy,0: Job aborting due to lookup failure on link: List_StudentFieldOfStudy
    
    Problem Solved:
    
    As stated in the introduction, to fix this problem, I simply added a sort stage prior to the lookup stage on the link serving as my reference (that is, on the link containing the value I’m trying to look up, which in my case was the student’s major/field of study). Here are some screen shots of how my job looked after I fixed it:
    
    View of the job design surface:
    
    View of Sort Stage:
    
    An important note about the sort stage. I needed to include two sort keys – one to sort the students, and another to sort the effective dates of each student’s major(s).
    
    Everything else in the job remained exactly the same. The results were a successfully running job with no lookup failures.

Resolving “UDA-SQL-0569 Unable to load the driver manager library ( db2cli.dll )” with Framework Manager 10.1

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:29:23 +0000

When installing Framework Manager 10.1 and attempting to use it for the first time, things went down hill nearly immediately. I made sure to install a copy of the DB2 client on my development machine, but I still ran into issues connecting to data sources in Framework Manager.

For those who need to install a DB2 client, IBM provides those downloads here for DB2 10.1. For other versions, you can go here. [Added 3/19/2013]

A good explanation of what each DB2 client “package” includes and what they’re used for can be found here.

Steps that I was taking:

Load Framework Manager and open a project
Expand Data Sources
Right-Click Data Source and click Test
The following happens:

Text from dialog box:

QE-DEF-0285 The logon failed.
QE-DEF-0325 The logon failed for the following reason:
RQP-DEF-0068 Unable to connect to at least one database during a multi-database attach to 1 database(s) in:
DW
UDA-SQL-0569 Unable to load the driver manager library ( db2cli.dll ).
UDA-SQL-0571 The operating system returned an error message ( The specified module could not be found. ).

How I resolved this:

I simply moved C:Program FilesIBMSQLLIBBIN placed in PATH variable near the front of the list of directories. Depending on your installation directory, you may need to change the path above to fit your environment. But this seems to have resolved my problem entirely.

Troubleshooting SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services and SharePoint 2010 Integration (Part 2)

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 19:44:36 +0000

You can visit Part 1 of this troubleshooting series by clicking here.

During our configuration of Reporting Services for SharePoint I ran into another common issue.

I consulted MSDN once again and followed the directions given at this MSDN article. Even after following all these instructions, when I would attempt to create a new BI Semantic Model Connection in the SharePoint library, I would receive the following error:

Cannot connect to the server or database.

Even after adding the Reporting Services service account to the SSAS Tabular instance as a server administrator, we still hit this error.

Once again I found little documentation out there as I was troubleshooting, presumably because SQL Server 2012 is still quite new. Here’s what we did to fix our problem:

The Analysis Services service must be running under a domain account. When I installed SSAS, I took all the defaults for the server installation. The SSAS service was running under some default built-in account which ended up being the problem.

Once we switched this to run under a domain account, I was able to create BI Semantic Model Connections using this library document type with no issues.

Troubleshooting SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services and SharePoint 2010 Integration (Part 1)

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 19:06:39 +0000

I recently worked with our SharePoint administrator to install SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services in SharePoint Integrated Mode to take advantage of PowerView. By following the installation instructions found at this MSDN article, we were able to painlessly install both Reporting Services and the Reporting Services Add-in from the SQL Server installation media.

Then began the configuration process. Since everyone’s environment is different, I found it difficult to troubleshoot some of the odd behavior that we were running in to. In Part 1 of this post I want to focus on what we did to overcome a specific error we were receiving:

After installation, I created a Business Intelligence Center site without any trouble. In the Connections library, I would attempt to add a Report Data Source and receive a SharePoint page that detailed the following error:

This SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) functionality is not supported. Use Central Administration to verify and fix one or more of the following issues:

A report server URL is not configured. Use the SSRS Integration page to set it.
The SSRS service application proxy is not configured. Use the SSRS service application pages to configure the proxy.
The SSRS service application is not mapped to this web application. Use the SSRS service application pages to associate the SSRS service application proxy to the web application.

Other times, I would receive a little bit more of a generic message saying something to the effect of “This SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) functionality is not supported” or “Unsupported Reporting Services Functionality”.

As it turns out, our specific problem was unrelated to any three of those bullet points.

Our solution?

Make sure to install the "Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Products” to all Web Front-End (WFE) nodes of your SharePoint farm.

On the Feature Selection screen of SQL Server setup, you can simply choose “Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Products” on your other WFE nodes. You don’t need to install the Database Engine Services or Reporting Services – SharePoint all over again…just the Add-in.

We began to suspect it was something related to missing components on the other nodes because as I was troubleshooting, I noticed that if I attempted to create a Report Data Source enough times, I would be able to proceed to different stages of the creation process. Sometimes I would hit the error right away. Sometimes I would get to the page where I could fill out the connection details but when I would attempt to save the data source I would get one of the error pages described above.

After we installed the Reporting Services Add-in on all WFE nodes, the problem stopped and we have not experienced any difficulty since.