SQL Server, PASS, and other data mishaps
SQL Server
Adventures in SSRS
Jan 7th
Came across a strange permission issue today that I thought I’d blog about since it is apparently somewhat common judging by the number of unanswered forum posts about it.
Adding/editing or Testing SSRS Datasources in Report Manager generates a permission error
A developer was trying to add a datasource and use “test connection” in the report manager web interface instead of BIDS which, incidentally worked. When they tried to save or test the data source, an error occurred “The permissions granted to user “Domain\User” are insufficient for performing this operation. (rsAccessDenied)” After much websearching and digging through verbose SSRS logs, SQL Traces, Windows Event logs, Process Monitor traces, etc. I had just about given up hope and turned to twitter to vent about the error. Luckily, Chris Testa-O’Neill , Doug Lane, and Tamera Clark came to my rescue and headed me down the right path of this being an SSRS catalog permission issue (Thanks again!)
Environment Details
SSRS 2008r2
Folder inheritance is broken and the developer account has Browser permissions on the root folder as well as Browser, Publisher and Report Builder permissions on the sub-folder. There are no system level permissions for the account.
The Problem
In the SSRS error log I found the following messages which are only slightly more helpful (Highlighted for influence)
System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapException: System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapException: The permissions granted to user ‘Domain\User’ are insufficient for performing this operation. —> Microsoft.ReportingServices.Diagnostics.Utilities.AccessDeniedException: The permissions granted to user ’Domain\User’ are insufficient for performing this operation.
at Microsoft.ReportingServices.WebServer.ReportingService2010Impl.TestConnectForDataSourceDefinition(DataSourceDefinition DataSourceDefinition, String UserName, String Password, String& ConnectError)…
The command is failing on the “TestConnectForDataSourceDefinition” method. The permissions needed are those required by this method.
The Fix
Near the bottom of the documentation for the TestConnectForDataSourceDefinition the permissions required are listed as “Execute report definition”
Granting this permission is accomplished by connecting to the SSRS server with SSMS and creating a new system role with just this permission
Then grant the new role “Execute Report Definitions” permission
Finally add the user account to the new system role, this is done in report manager under Site Settings ->Security -> New Role Assignment
It was 2 good years
Oct 17th
The voters have spoken and I will not be returning to the PASS board as an elected director in 2013. A week ago I wrote a post about campaigning being hard and in it I wrote something that I believe and keep coming back to.
I’ve spent many thousands of hours of my life serving the PASS organization and want the opportunity to spend a few hundred
thousandmore in the same role over the next two years. However, if by chance the community wants to see someone else in my seat on the board I can live with that, there aren’t any bad choices.
As much time and energy as I’ve put into PASS over the years this outcome stung a bit personally but I’ve come to accept the reality of it. Thanks to everyone who supported me in this election cycle, I was truly humbled to receive your support.
Congrats to JRJ, Sri and Wendy. I’m sure yall will do a great job keeping the organization moving forward on the right track.
Getting things done on the PASS Board
Oct 10th
Previously I’ve written about many things I’ve done while on the PASS Board. It’s often easy to take credit as a member of the board for doing things with PASS. The reality though is that there’s always more to it than just deciding to do something, digging in and personally accomplishing some goal. PASS is lucky to have a paid staff that executes on many of our objectives. This staff collectively is often referred to simply as “HQ” and they are the primary source of continuity within the organization.
PASS HQ
PASS HQ consists of about 16 people who are permanent salaried staff and at times (summit) upwards of a dozen additional contractors. The Community Evangelists (Karla Landrum and Niko Neugebauer) will be the most likely contact points for most community members however they are just the front lines. The other people within the HQ team are where much of the additional work happens that allows us to put on great events like the Summit. These largely unsung heroes of the SQL community do the majority of the heavy lifting from day to day and in many ways should be recognized as critical members of our SQL Community even if most of them wouldn’t know a tempdb from a checkdb.
Relationships matter
Learning to work within the HQ structure is very important for Board members as HQ has such a huge impact on all things PASS that they can greatly contribute to helping make a board member’s priorities a reality or conversely they can contribute to that same board member’s priorities languishing. I’m happy to say that in the years I’ve been volunteering with PASS, I have taken the time to build strong relationships across the organization that allow me to get things done effectively. Building these relationships has not always been a cakewalk, in fact far from it, but adversity seems to have had a way of making the working relationship I have within PASS HQ better. Knowing where to turn within HQ to get answers or to unstick a hung process has proven to be invaluable in my tenure as a volunteer with PASS and now even more so as a Board member.
Please consider voting for me. I’m running for the PASS Board of Directors, and I need your help to make a difference. Click here to read about why I’m running.
PASS – Campaigning is tough
Oct 8th
In order to get elected to the PASS Board, Ive twice now been asked to do something that is easily one of the more challenging things I’ve needed to do professionally.
Self-Promotion
Im a typical DBA type who has never been a fan of self-promotion, Ill happily sit in a corner and give 100% to an effort without looking for any acknowledgement in return. I believe in doing a good Job and letting the results speak for themselves. This doesn’t necessarily mean I’m quiet or a reserved introvert, I’m actually the opposite. I’d go so far as to say that my fellow Board members might agree that it wouldn’t be an understatement to say I can be quite outspoken and opinionated especially when its related to things I’m passionate about, unfortunately for campaigning purposes those are things only the 13 other Board members have seen regularly.
Campaigning to win on my terms
Since deciding to run for another term on the PASS Board I’ve had many conversations with pillars of our community about how I could win another term while not letting my disdain for self-promotion control my ability to get elected. I want to maintain my position on the board so that I can continue serving the entire community. To do that I’ve chosen to highlight my prior record and future plans for the organization without leveraging some of the other more self-promotional/direct contact aspects of typical election campaigns. This was an incredibly difficult decision to make because I really want to win… but not at the expense of my own personality. As a wise person once told me: “it’s better to be yourself and loose than pretend and loose hope”
My plan has been simple, keep doing what I’ve been doing. (The question is: is it working? I suppose I’ll find out Oct 15th)
- Blogging – I’ve blogged about PASS since nearly the beginning of my blogging (post #2) So I’ve continued
- Forums – I’ve been active in the Election forums (have a question, please post it!)
- Twitter – I’m always open to chat about #sqlpass on twitter regardless of whether its elections season or not
- Phone/Instant message – I’ve had a few phone/IM conversations about my platform. Want to chat? Just ask. I’m always available
- References – I asked a few people who know of my work with PASS for letters of reference
* Andy Warren, Jeremiah Peschka and Tjay Belt (pdf pg 5-7)
Continuing to Serve
I’ve spent many thousands of hours of my life serving the PASS organization and want the opportunity to spend a few hundred thousand more in the same role over the next two years. However, if by chance the community wants to see someone else in my seat on the board I can live with that, there aren’t any bad choices. I will still continue to focus on the SQL community; it will just be in a different way than I am able to currently.
If you appreciate and expect this level of candor from the PASS Board, Please consider voting for me. I’m running for the PASS Board of Directors, and I need your help to make a difference. Click here to read about why I’m running.
Quick PASS Chapters update
Sep 17th
PASS Chapters Update
As PASS Director of Chapters, I had my first set of meetings a few weeks ago where every Chapter Leader worldwide was invited and thought I’d write a quick post about it.
Getting up to speed in a new PASS portfolio and having something good to talk about takes time so this meeting took a lot longer to materialize than I’d originally hoped. The primary delay was it took quite a while to get enough good content that I felt comfortable inviting 300+ chapter leaders to give an extra an hour of their lives to PASS. Now that the initial break in time is handled and I know we’re making solid progress towards improving PASS’s support of Chapters (I’ll have stuff to talk about that matters) We’ve agreed to schedule these update meetings quarterly. This is in addition to the update meetings we’ve already been having bi-monthly with Regional mentors and the Bi-Monthly(ish) Chapter update emails/blog posts Ive already been doing.
Global Organizations = Follow the sun = Hard
Trying to find a time (or 2) that accomidates 300 different people is extremely challenging, In the past we’ve held Regional Mentor meetings at 9AM CST and 9PM CST in an effort to allow as many RM’s as possible to participate. We’ve had varrying degrees of success and quite a few requests to have a time that better fits those in the EMEA region. So we decided to move the initial time of the Chapter leader meeting to 6AM CST leaving the 9PM CST meeting in place. This seemed to work out OK but, being ready to present at 6AM local time was tougher than I expected, combine that with a PASS site that wasnt working properly and the first meeting went less than spectacularly. In the future we’ll probably move the morning meeting back to 9AM CST and offer a third meeting option in the middle of the day that better supports those in EMEA. The meetings are recorded and posted online for all to chapter leaders so theres always that option as well. Im open to other ideas about timings of these meetings so If your a RM or a Chapter leader and have an opinion feel free to contact me to share it.
Chapter Leader Resources
Karla (Blog|Twitter) has been working incredibly hard to update the Chapter Leaders resources page. She has made many updates and changes to this Chapter leader only page, one of the largest changes mentioned is related to the new process that book publishers are asking PASS Chapters to use. Im optimistic that the new process will help Chapters get a better selection of books in a shorter amount of time. Karla also added a new Chapter logo as a resource on this page.
Chapter Tools Project
A good portion of time was spent going over the changes in tools that have been rolled out for chapters.
The aim of this project is for PASS to provide effective tools to minimize the marketing work Chapter Leaders have to perform and increase reliability of records all while creating a one-stop shop of resources to efficiently promote and run a PASS Chapter.
To date, weve completed updates to the chapter newsletter emailer, created a chapter dashboard and created an events framework for chapters to use in displaying their meetings. The events framework is the latest update, it is currently used on the chapters portal, and although its currently a v1 release it handles many things chapter leaders let us know they wanted like Auto archiving of meeting details, Auto populating Speaker info, timezone display differences, uploads and more. There are several other hooks planned in the future for this events framework but this should provide a good starting infrastructure as we build more on to it.
Community Meetings at the Summit
Also covered were the community meetings at the summit. If you’re a PASS community leader one or more of these is likely for you!
VIRTUAL CHAPTER LEADERS
Tuesday, November 6
8:00 am – 9:00 am
Led by Denise McInerney
SQLSATURDAY LEADERS
Tuesday, November 6
9:30 am – 12: 30 pm
Led by Kendal Van Dyke
REGIONAL MENTORS
Tuesday, November 6
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Led by Allen Kinsel
CHAPTER LEADERS
Tuesday, November 6
2:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Led by Allen Kinsel and Regional Mentors
