What is a good free/open source alternative to WebFOCUS?
Is there an ASP.NET way of getting info from an OLAP cube?
Update: I chose Magnus Smith's answer as the correct one, but Alexmac's answer was also very good!
I am not aware of free analytical suite. But what is it you are trying to accomplish?
You can query an OLAP cube by using MDX queries with ADO.net.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms144785.aspx
You can then bind the results to a datagrid for example. MDX is a little like SQL but be careful as it has several syntax differences. I think Excel has a query tool you can use to graphically construct your queries which can be helpful.
On a related note look into SQL reporting services. With SQL express you can use a cut down version of sql reporting services that may accomplish what you are looking to do.
Watch out, MDX is horrible - nothing like SQL even though it looks like it is.
You can get a .NET control to show OLAP data on a web page. Our company tested one from Dundas that was OK. I never got involved though so I don't know if it was brilliant or merely serviceable.
http://www.dundas.com/Gallery/Chart/NET/index.aspx?ImgGroup=OLAP
We gave up on SQL Reporting Services as it was not suitable for Internet usage (fine on Intranet though).
Related
We're upgrading our systems to support clustering and auto failover features. Our business runs .NET 4 applications, web apps and services on SQL Server Express. We can upgrade to SQL Server Standard, but the cost has motivated us to consider other options. Is it a legitimate option to integrate our .NET data layer with ODP.NET? After searching, I have seen a tendentious statement or two in the negative (viz) and yet it would seem that people are doing it anyway. What development features in the Visual Studio IDE will we lose? Thanks for your help!
Well, I'm now working since 20+ years with Oracle and MS SQL Server, having done a lot of projects. Some projects are running now more than 10 years, with all the updates, maintenance and so on.
My quick answer is: Stay with MS SQL Server. Go to Oracle only, if you have really GOOD TECHNICAL reason, or if you are planning really an ENORMOUS database, and if you have enough staff to handle all thge administration.
The main reason is that SQL Server is much easier to maintain; and it also integrates greatly into the Microsoft environment.
Oracle, in contrast, has a steep learning curve. The handling of Oracle is much more "manual" then MS SQL Server. Well, that's also a good thing, because you are in control of every small detail, but it also means that you need to learn a lot; or you need to pay experts. And it is not so easy to find people who really know what to do.
I really like both Systems, but for a rule of thumb, I normally suggest to use MS SQL Server.
I've been using .net with Oracle for years, and migrate away from it whenever the option is available.
If all your database code is in stored procs and you call it though the codebehind or a library and you use ansi sql your migration from ms sql to oracle will be fairly painless.
If you use TableAdapters, they re-write any sql you put in to the oldschool oracle 8 syntax like table1,table2,table3 then have a big where clause to do the join conditions. There's also some weird bugs where sometimes sql that runs fine over in SQL Developer won't work in the TableAdapters.
If you use Entity Framework migration should be pretty easy, but the MS SQL driver is much better then the Oracle one. There have been several queries I couldn't do though EF in oracle because of some of the various errors with the current driver.
If you need more info let me know.
Also if Cost is the main reason to consider migration, why not go with mysql?
Since you are already working in MS SQL, you must be habitual of the way it work, be it entity framework or any other data execution. Yes offcource, microsoft has very high license rates for it. But if you want to move to any other database, it is perfectly alright. I have personally used MS SQL and MySQL both. Initially you might face some syntax related issues, but do remember that logic remains the same for fetching and saving the data. Further it gives a benefit that you got to learn a new language and that too at the expense of far less money.
I want to make a website. According to the requirements I have many simple as well as complex reports which may have more column to display sometimes. I haven't worked with the reporting in web. I want to know which is best from both of them according to my requirement.
Without actually knowing your requirements - my gut feeling would be to favor SQL Server Reporting Services.
Why?
It comes with SQL Server, so it's basically free (if you have SQL Server anyway)
it's quite capable in terms of rendering and exporting
it's also extensible with .NET code, if you ever need to
you can schedule reports at a given time etc.
Crystal Reports on the other hand
is a separate add-on you have to buy (and it's quite expensive, too)
it's a bit clunky and hard to use at times (in my opinion)
it doesn't integrate nearly as well with SQL Server and ASP.NET
we are currently investigating a migration of an application that doesn't meet company standards. The application is built using VB6 and Shape SQL/Access. The application has about 120 reports by storing Shape SQL strings in a database which the user can modify using a wizard.
Shape sql is not allowed at this company. We have investigated plain SQL, Linq, Entity Framework as alternatives... but all result in more complex solutions.
Does anyone have another suggestion?
Update: Shape SQL is an ADO command to get hierarchical datasets, for further info: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/189657
I know you said SHAPE is not allowed, but you could still use SHAPE against SQL Server through an ADO connection if you could get that criteria relaxed in the face of more difficult alternative implementations.
Have you looked at the XML features in SQL Server 2005 and up?
Hierarchical result sets are not typical relational database features, but you can do a lot with XML.
Have a look at this article, too
We have been in contact with Microsoft (in the Netherlands), their solution for now is to use Linq as a replacement. They also have contacted MSFT to get some responses, I will update my answer when we get more information.
Is there any tool that will inspect either asp.net or sql server and report all the queries that are run against the database? The reason I ask is I am using Linq for a project and want to double check what its actually doing for each page.
Ideally I'd like to view a page in a browser and have a report of all the queries that were run to create that page.
I know I can view the SQL it runs for individual queries using debugging/breakpoints, and I know about LinqPad, but I'm afraid Linq is making several more queries on its own to get related data that I may not be directly aware of. Is there anything (tool/program/report/etc) like what I described? Thanks!
EDIT: Is there any FREE tool that can do this? I am using Sql Server 2008 Express and don't have SQL Profiler unfortunately.
Absolutely, There is a SQL tool called SQL Profiler. It does require elevated database permissions in order to run profiler.
There is a decent tutorial on how to run Profiler on TechRepublic.
Another option out there is the NHibernate Profiler. I know that it is not as "free" as SQL Profiler, have never used it, but the screen shots for it look pretty cool.
Profiler is the best tool of them all for this but it can be expensive in inexperienced hands.
You can also try to do "exec sp_who" and then a "dbcc inputbuffer (111)" - just put the process id in the place of 111.
SQL Profiler does that.
Since you are using SQL Server Express, how about this tool?
Profiler for Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 Express Edition
Microsoft SQL Server family includes
free Express edition, that is fully
functional, however has some
disappointing limitations which
prevent from using it in development
process. One of them is absense of
profiling tools, standard SQL profiler
is not included. However, now you have
an ability to use express edition for
tuning your system. SQL Server Express
Edition Profiler provides the most of
functionality standard profiler does,
such as choosing events to profile,
setting filters, etc. By now there are
no analogue free tools.
Download Here
A quick and dirty way to log LINQ to SQL queries in ASP.NET is this (assuming a Northwind.Dbml):
NorthwindDataContext context = new NorthwindDataContext();
context.Log = Response.Output;
This will write all queries to the response stream. Nasty, but handy for instant gratification without need for debuggers or profilers etc.
For the LINQ to SQL queries specifically, you can also use the DataContext.Log property to output the queries to a TextWriter, so you can do things like write to debugger output window or (as in my use) to log4net.
These links might help:
Log to debugger output window, file, or memory
Log to log4net
Won't cover the stuff not generated by L2S, so this may not be the end all solution for you... but I've found it helpful.
This one is only free for the first 45 days, but it gives you runtime profiling/logging with a bunch of filter options, SQL Server query execution plan logging etc. Built specifically for profiling L2S apps:
http://www.huagati.com/L2SProfiler
What's your preferred method of providing a search facility on a website? Currently I prefer to use Lucene.net over Indexing Service / SQL Server full-text search (as there's nothing to set up server-side), but what other ways are being used out there?
We used both Lucene.net, Indexing Service and SQL Server full-text. For a project with large and heavy DB search functionality SQL search has an upper hand in terms of performance/resource hit. Otherwise Lucene is much better in all aspects.
Take a look at Solr. It uses Lucene for text indexing, but it is a full blown http server so you can post documents over http and do search using urls. The best part is that it gives you faceted searching out of the box which will require a lot of work if you do it yourself.
you could use google, it's not going to be the fastest indexer but it does provide great results when you have no budget.
dtSearch is one we've often used, but I'm not really that big a fan of it.
A lot of people are using Google's custom search these days; even a couple of banks that I know of use it for their intranet.
If you need to index all the pages of your site (not just the ones Google indexes) or if you want to create a search for your intranet web sites, the Google Mini is pretty sweet. It will cost you some money, but it is really easy to have it up and running within just a couple of hours. Depending on how many pages you need to index it can be expensive though.
I'm using dtSearch and I (kind of) like it. The API isn't the greatest in the world for .NET but it can get the job done and it's pretty fast. And it's cheap, so your boss will like it (~$1,000 US).
The results leave something to be desired as it doesn't do any kind of semantic relevance rankings or anything fancy. It does a better job than anything you can get out of MS SQL server though.
It has a web spider that makes it easy to do quick search apps on a website. If you need to you can use the API to create hooks into your database and to provide item level security - but you have to do the work yourself. Their forum leaves something to be desired as well but maybe people will start posting dtSearch stuff here. :)
Has anyone tried Microsoft search server express?
http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/serverproducts/searchserverexpress/default.aspx
I haven't tried it yet, but it could potentially be powerful.
From the site it looks primarily geared towards sharepoint users but given its sdk I don't see why you couldn't use it for a regular old site search
I also recommend SOLR. It's easy to set up, maintain, and configure. I've found it to be stable and easy to scale. There's a c# package for interfacing with solr.