If you install SSRS during the rest of SQL Server 2005 installation it will get configured automatically and without problems.

If you don’t install SSRS at the same time as SQL Server, then you will have to run Reporting Services Configuration utility. It has been observed that setting up reporting services after the fact is very likely to generate errors and more trouble than one would anticipate.

Say you’ve extracted string “Hello,\r\nWorld!” in a debugger and you want to display it correctly with new line characters instead of C# escape sequence. Here is a quick way to do it:

1. Create new text file.
2. Copy and paste text into that file.
3. Open “Find and Replace” dialog.
4. Make sure that Use Regular Expressions checkbox is checked.
5. Type in Find What: \\r\\n
6. Type in Replace with: \n
7. Click Replace All

Here is a quick template I have created for myself some time ago:

set ANSI_NULLS ON
set QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
go

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[DateTimeScale] 
(
      @date as DateTime
)
RETURNS varchar(50)
AS
BEGIN
      DECLARE @min as int
      SET @min = DatePart(minute, @date)
      SET @min = @min / 5

      DECLARE @minStr as varchar(10)
      IF (@min < 10)
            SET @minStr = '0' + convert(varchar, @min)
      ELSE
            SET @minStr = convert(varchar, @min)
      
      RETURN 'D' + convert(varchar, DatePart(day, @date)) 
            + ' H' + convert(varchar, DatePart(hour, @date)) 
            + ' M' + @minStr
END

DateTimeScale function can be used to normalize time presentation for certain time of the day intervals. Expression @min / 5 is used to define granularity of time intervals.

Conditional execution of @min < 10 is used to add zero prefix to numbers below 10, so sorting can be effective.

One of the PDC2008 items is a technical whitepaper that is published online and you can open that XPS document directly here.

IE 7 tries to use anonymous identity first. That works if Anonymous Authentication mode is set. If both Anonymous and Windows Authentication modes are set, anonymous configuration wins unless resource access is restricted to Anonymous user.

For example, anonymous user account does not have permission to access static file qualifies as resource access restriction.

In ASP.NET case Web.config file may deny access for anonymous user to a resource. For example, UserA has explicit access and no other users have access:

<authorization>
	<allow users="domainName\UserA"/>
	<deny users="*"/>
	<deny users="?"/>
</authorization>

Consider access to the following two URLs. Anonymous user does not have access to both URLs.

/First.htm 
/Second.aspx 

First time IE 7 tries accessing website with no identity passed. Web server reports 401.3 error. IE 7 tries to negotiate user identity and eventually prompts user for credentials. Fourth call to the server succeeds with identity supplied by the user.

Second URL repeats the same process except for the password prompt. IE 7 remembers identity supplied by the user and tries using it. This time IIS server gets only two requests instead of four.

OpenOffice database is based on HSQLDB. HSQLDB is Java based database and JDBC is its native driver. There is no .NET driver for HSQLDB, but there is a way to access JDBC driver from .NET. It is covered on Using JDBC from .NET webpage.

I was pleased to learn from PowerShell Team Blog today that Windows PowerShell 2.0 will add Integrated Scripting Environment. The IDE will be independent of Visual Studio.

Kate Gregory's blog entry has some very interesting information on how a startup company can obtain access to Visual Studio Team Suite, Windows, SQL Server, SharePoint and other software.