The Houston SharePoint User group reached out to other area user groups this year and asked if we would like to participate in a joint user group event around Christmas time. We, of course, thought this was a fantastic idea. What is better than having community get together? Having multiple communities get together for a great event. Thus the joint Casino Night was born.

When: Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

Where:Norris Conference Center, Red Oak Ballroom

Registration: Link

Special Notes

The registration email contained some special restrictions. Please see below:

Special restrictions may apply, some offers not valid in all states, see in-store for details, this offer not valid in Iceland or the Turkish Islands, no purchase necessary when purchasing, if you experience certain conditions longer than 5 to 6 six hours please see your doctor.

Special Thanks

While I was not involved with sponsorship for this event Red Gate reached out to the community looking for special events at the end of the year. I responded with information for the event and they loved the idea. They loved it to the point that they helped sponsor the event. Just another reason I love being a part of the SQL Community.

Driving home from rugby practice last week I started thinking about something the coach said. It is a phrase that anyone who has played sports has heard. Play “heads up”. Our rugby coach wanted us to keep our heads up to see what was going on around the pitch while we played to look for opportunities and/or threats.

As I thought about this more, I started to reflect on my work projects and the major account that I manage. I realized that much of what I am doing is a result of working with my head up and looking for opportunities to help my client or my company. We gained an additional project for Dynamics when I was on site doing SQL Server work because I was listening to my client talk about their environment and the struggles they were having with their Dynamics implementation.

This concept is not just for managers. Project team members can identify issues and prevent gold plating by being a heads up team member. If a team member knows the scope of the project and is actively watching out for anything that will threaten or change scope, he can help ensure the success of the project.

As project managers, how do we actively manage with a “Heads Up” mentality and how do we encourage our team members to be “Heads Up?

As project managers, we should by definition already be doing this. When we are actively controlling change, quality, and scope. While these process group often allow project managers to take a heads up view of a project we often miss the opportunities when communicating with stakeholders, team members, and clients.

My teams are highly technical and laser focused on the task at hand. I have discussed this topic with some of them. What I have found is that spending time helping them better understand the business goals of the project and the stakeholder requirements can help increased their visibility into the project. A better understanding of the project and not just their specific project activities gives them the information that they need to play head up.

Playing heads up allows us to see opportunities and threats on our projects. I would love to hear how your team manages projects from a heads up prospective.

Last weekend I presented Adventures in Project Management at SQL Saturday #97, Austin.  This was the first time I gave this presentation and it went really well.  The talk was well attended and seemed to be well received.  I think the fact that no one threw any fruit at me means they liked it.  You can get the slides from my presentation below.

SQLSaturday#97AustinPresentation

Wes and the SQL Saturday #97 team did a fantastic job putting the event together.  From this humble speaker’s perspective the event ran smoothly without a hitch.  This is no easy task for a team putting on their first event.  I know this from our my first hand experience putting on SQL Saturday #57, Houston.  I shared our lessons learned with the Austin team and they took all of them to heart.

The event was made even sweeter by the fact that Wes Brown (Blog | Twitter) was named a Microsoft MVP the morning of the event.  It is hard to believe this had not happened before now.  This is long overdue for everything Wes has done for the SQL Server community.

Jonathan Presenting at SQL Saturday #97 Austin

I have been selected to speak at SQL Saturday #97 in Austin, TX on October 1st. I will be presenting a bonus topic, Adventures in Project Management.

I am very much looking forward to presenting is Austin. Reviewing the lineup, it will be an event not to be missed. Some of my favorite people will be there: AJ Mendo (Blog | Twitter), Ryan Adams (Blog | Twitter), Joe Celko just to name a few. Wes Brown (Blog | Twitter) and his leadership team are shaping up a great event. Don’t miss out, get registered today.

Adventures in Project Management Synopsis

Join Jonathan Gardner in a discussion about the project management and how understanding the process can increase the chances of delivering a top quality work product. Learn the questions to ask that will help prevent scope creep and manage stakeholders from a PMI certified Project Manager.

I was recently asked by a client to architect a data and reporting environment.  Part of the business requirements was separation of the production database server and the reporting services server.   Another part of the business requirements stated that the reports were to leverage a shared data source and Windows Authentication.  While none of the business requirements were a problem for the SQL Server 2008 R2 environment I was creating, there was an issue with the double hop authentication.  I struggled to find a guide to setting this up in the BOL or on any of the usual blog suspects.  After opening a case with Microsoft I finally got all the information.

Architecture

This article will cover implementation of a 3-Tier SQL Server 2008 R2 reporting services installation.  For this discussion the database will be running on SQL01.  Reporting Services will be running on SRS01, and the client consuming the reports will be a local workstation LAPPY386.

Reporting Services Configuration

NOTE: This article assumes that Microsoft best practices were followed and the SQL Server services are running under domain accounts.

To use double hop authentication, SRS uses Kerberos authentication.  This is not enabled by default in the reporting services configuration.  It is added to the reporting services configuration file.  For a default installation the file is C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS10_50.MSSQLSERVER\Reporting Services\ReportServer\rsreportserver.config.  Edit this file in notepad and add thetag in the authentication section.  Once the file is modified it should look like the section below.

<AuthenticationTypes>; <RSWindowsNegotiate />; <RSWindowsNTLM />; </AuthenticationTypes> 

Service Principal Names

This article is not about SPNs so I won’t go into detail about them.  In short, they help facilitate authentication for a service when it executes.   You can find more information about SPNs in the Books Online here.

Without the SPNs set properly the following error is a common issue:

 An error has occurred during report processing. (rsProcessingAborted)      Cannot create a connection to data source 'Datasource'. (rsErrorOpeningConnection)           Login failed for user 'NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON'.

On SQL01:

SetSPN –A mssql/sql01:1433 domain\SQLServiceAcct

SetSPN –A mssql/sql01.domain.local:1433 domain\SQLServiceAcct

SetSPN –A http/srs01 domain\SRSServiceAcct 

SetSPN –A http/srs.01.domain.local domain\SRSServiceAcct

To ensure that the SPN has been configured correctly for each account the SetSPN command is able to list all SPNs set for a service account.

SetSPN –L domain\account

SetSPN –X

With all of this in place the double hop authentication should now be working.

UPDATED:

Vijay Krishnan (Blog | Twitter ) pointed out something I was missing in this guide.  

Account Delegation

 The service account domain\account needs to be configured for Kerberos Delegation. The configuration needs to be set on the service account in Active Directory.  See the image below for the setting. 

It is no secret that I am a fan of Apple’s products.  I carry a MacBook Pro, an iPhone, and talk about how much I love them to everyone who will listen.  What you typically won’t hear me rant and rave about is how I think Microsoft really “gets it” and how they are heading in the right direction.  They have products that I love like SQL Server and Office but I felt they were a little out of touch.  That was until last week…

One of our clients, YES Prep Public Schools, asked me to join them at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA for an Executive Briefing.  I was very excited because I have never been to the Microsoft’s headquarters or even that part of the country.  As their partner, it is an honor that they feel that we are part of their team.

For those of you wondering what a Microsoft Executive Briefing is, you are not alone.  I didn’t know what it was either.  A Microsoft Executive Briefing is a customized series of meetings with unprecedented access to Microsoft executives and product team members.  The agenda is client dictated and covers any topics the client would like to discuss.  It was whirlwind of meetings with each one better than the last.  During our time at the EBC we were able to take the time to visit Microsoft’s Home of the Future and Envisioning Lab.  If you are ever in Redmond and can swing a tour of these, do it.

Unified Vision

It was clear when talking with the product groups and through the Envisioning Lab, that Microsoft has a unified vision and commitment to try to make users more efficient by delivering contextually relevant information.  In a world that becomes more and more cluttered with data streams, the ability to filter out the noise and leave only relevant information becomes absolutely essential.  Examples of this are seen throughout this video developed by the Envisioning Lab.

Contextually relevant information is already delivered in Outlook 2010.  Below the messages, connections with a contact including meetings, emails, and Lync (formally OCS) conversations are displayed.  This functionality can further be extended by adding Outlook Social Connectors to pull the contacts latest posts and information from various social networks.  This information has started to change the way users connect with people by centralizing relevant information.

This contextual vision surfaced again in the “live tiles” in Windows Phone 7 and then again in the latest preview of Windows 8.  The goal of the “live tiles” is to quickly deliver relevant information to the user.  I can really change the way users interact with devices.  I guess I just didn’t get the message.

Mobility

Across all the product groups it was clear that Microsoft is making a real commitment to mobility.  While many people scoff at Windows Phone 7 after a visit to the Envisioning Lab it is clear that they have put a lot of thought into the platform.  Microsoft is working to move beyond just having an app for something.  They are trying to deliver contextually relevant as mentioned above.  They have tried to communicate it through a series of commercials that I feel really didn’t drive the message home but after our EBC and when the Mango software release is available, I will seriously consider giving up my iPhone 4 for a  Windows phone.  I can’t believe I just wrote that…

Microsoft’s commitment to mobility goes beyond Windows Phone 7.  They have started to embrace web standards allowing for cross-platform access.  We see this in Outlook Web Access on Exchange 2011, SharePoint 2010, and Office 365.  Users on non Windows platforms or non Internet Explorer browsers have the same user experience as those that are.  This includes mobile browsers on platforms like iOS and Android.  It has even been hinted with the first discussions about Windows 8 that HTML 5 and JavaScript are going to be used as part of the development platform.

The Future

While excited has not typically been a word I would use when talking about how I feel about the future and direction of Microsoft, it is now.  I am truly exited to see what is going to come out of Redmond in the weeks and months to come.

What trends in technology excite you for the future?  What do you see on the horizon and how will it change the way we do business?

In the world of mobile location based services, it does not get any bigger thanFoursquare. On October 6th, 2010, they experienced an 11-hour outage that was caused by unknown errors encountered while adding a new shard to the database. While Foursquare is not a business critical application, their outage gives those of us who do support critical applications an opportunity to learn from their problems. While I have limited knowledge of what caused Foursquare’s outage, there are three things it makes me think about: architecture, testing, and change management.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Everyday more and more iPads show up in boardrooms across the globe. While many classify the iPad as a consumer device, corporate IT departments are going have to support them. Below I have created a list of iPad applications that can be leveraged by business users.

To read my full list of applications check out the full article here

Today marked the official release of blog.insource.com, the corporate blog for Insource Technology, and my employer. I started working on this project a little over 6 months ago with a team of dedicated team to make this site a reality. Being the de facto Editor-in-Chief, this project has been my baby and it is a real joy to get it online.

With the deployment of the Insource Blog, what will happen of JonathanAGardner.com? The current technical material will remain on as it is on the site. Future technical content will be posted on the Insource blog with a summary article and link here on JonathanAGardner.com.

The focus of this site will shift from technical information to discussing topics about corporate blogging and social media. I will cover the business challenges as well as technical hurdles of implementing a corporate wide blogging and social media solution.

I have also started experimenting with a Tumblr site to share thoughts and media. This content will include technical as well as non-technical information I find relevant and interesting. I would love for you to follow and engage with me there as well.

If you have any questions or concerns about the shift, I would be more than happy to discuss them with you.

I recently worked on a project for my employer, Insource Technology, to develop a corporate blog. As the project progressed we ran into an interesting problem. An author would upload a .docx file to the site without an issue. When the file was downloaded it would not download as a .docx file but as a .zip file. When the .zip file was extracted the contents showed the XML structure of the .docx file but the file was not readable by Microsoft Word.

Background

Microsoft’s XML Document Format

With the release of Office 2007, Microsoft released a new file format based on XML. Microsoft dubbed this new file format Open XML and claimed many tangible advantages including smaller file size, improved privacy control and better integration. A full list of extensions and more in-depth information on the Open XML format can be found here

MIME File Types

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an internet standard designed to identify the type of media content served by a web browser. The MIME types are used to help web browsers understand how to handle file types presented by a web browser or email application. Some of these MIME file types are set up by default to be interpreted correctly by the server. On some servers the .docx filetype is not set up by default.

Solution

Serving Office 2007 documents from an Apache Web Server

If you are running a blog on an apache web server you will need to add the following code to a .htaccess file in the root directory of your blog site. If you already have a .htaccess file you can add this to that file. No restart of the apache server is required.

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document docx application/vnd.ms-word.document.macroEnabled.12 docm application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.template dotx application/vnd.ms-word.template.macroEnabled.12 dotm application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet xlsx application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12 xlsm application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.template xltx application/vnd.ms-excel.template.macroEnabled.12 xltm application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.binary.macroEnabled.12 xlsb application/vnd.ms-excel.addin.macroEnabled.12 xlam application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation pptx application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.presentation.macroEnabled.12 pptm application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slideshow ppsx application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slideshow.macroEnabled.12 ppsm application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.template potx application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.template.macroEnabled.12 potm application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.addin.macroEnabled.12 ppam application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slide sldx application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slide.macroEnabled.12 sldm application/vnd.ms-officetheme thmx application/onenote onetoc application/onenote onetoc2 application/onenote onetmp application/onenote onepkg

Serving Office 2007 document from and IIS Web Server

It is not necessary to add the MIME file types to versions of IIS 7.0 or greater. Microsoft’s Technet has a full article outlining the process to Register the 2007 Office system file format MIME types on servers. This article includes how to add the MIME file types to IIS 6.x web servers.