Just Sold, $600.00, Purchased one year ago, 600.00.  Easy come, Easy go.  Yah I tried to get 800.00 for it, but I took what I could get, heck I got a year out of it.

I know my dad will be sad to see it go, the look on his face when EJ showed him Dad's new car was price less.

The ad as it appeared on Craigs list:

1989 Buick Century - $800 (Grandview)

1989 Buick Century. 140K miles. Runs good. Has good tires.

Runs great. I drove it every day for the last year to work downtown. The paints not pretty on it, but neither am I. The only issue is the transmission fluid needs to be topped up once a month, about 1/2 quart a month depending on how much you drive. 6 cylinder, 3.8, Front wheel drive, heat, a/c, 25/27mpg, Cruise control, No radio. I will get it inspected prior to selling. Has clean title.

Installing vendor databases on SQL Server is usually pretty straight forward.  Not many DBA's like the process, but the proliferation of 3rd party products that use SQL Server is continuing to grow.

Recently this particular vendor, of course insisting their product was 64 bit and SQL Server 2005 compatible, ran into problems for me.  It's only compatible after you manually add registry entries that make the installshield program think there is a 32 bit instance of MSDE !  Yah, that's compatible (oh by the way, those registry entries also break the sql browser service so you whole instance becomes unavailable unless it is accessed directly through a port number).  NICE !

Getting through the above process was painful enough, than the installshield installer errors out with a SQL Server error on creating a view, indicating that a dependent object is missing.

Technical support, while helpful is clueless.  "Never seen that before!"  After 3 days of issues, i'm basically troubleshooting for them, taking traces from our lab environment and comparing them.  Finally we stumble on to the fact that installshield is creating a _setup directory where it is putting the SQL Server scripts.  This folder (_setup), happens to be under the data directory where the MDF's are being created (NICE).  This data directory happens to be a mount point!

Ahhh, for whatever reason, Installshield runs the scripts differently from a mount point vs. a drive letter.   We think it's either a bug in Installshield or an issue with the permissions on the mount point.  We were not able to find any differences in permissions, but sure enough when we changed the location of the data files (which changes the location of the _setup directory), objects in the database were created in the correct order.   3 days of my life gone.

This vendor could have done many things differently.  Providing some type of manual work around, scripts to create the database (this was not an option so I was screwed), backups to manually restore, something, someway to escape the installshield install (which was like version 5 !).

And this was not a small dippy vendor, this is compliance software used by many of the big banking and financial institutions.  No wonder so many found them selves in danger of collapse !

Watch those mount points. 

SOLD

I have up for sale on Craigs list one Murray Tractor, $100.00

I'll be sad to see it go, I enjoyed puttering with it...

Murray riding lawn tractor with cart. 10 HP engine, starter and battery 1 year old. 32" cut rear discharge. This is definetly an older riding mower, i used it on another property and no longer need it. 100 obo. For an older tractor the thing just works, the biggest reason i'm getting rid of it is lack of storage and lack of safety equipment. The tractor was made before the "seat kill switches", and the mower blades have a tendency to spin (albeit slow with little power), even when the mowing deck isn't engaged. With 3 small children, it can be a safety issue. The only reason i ever kept and fixed this tractor is I liked the rear discharge cut, the yard i mowed with it was large, but I still disliked tractors with the side discharge, pia to cut around stuff.

Opening Installshield Cab Files / Extract Installshield cab file

Recently I needed to open an Installshield cab file to extract some SQL Server scripts from a failed vendor installation.  I was surprised to find that I was not able to do so.  Installshield does not use the same type of cab file that Microsoft does.

I found a command line utility to view and extract the cab files.  I also found an excellent shareware program, called ZipScan from foobar software. (if your allowed to use these at your company than great !).

In order to extract an installshield cab file I've put this together, you need two files (all listed at the end)

i6comp020.zip and i6comp103b.zip.

1.  Extract i6comp020.zip and put just the .exe in the folder with the cab file resides.
2.  Extract i6comp103b.zip and put only the zd51145.dll in the same folder as well.
3.  To extract the cab file open a command window and execute:

i6comp e file_to_extract.txt some_cab_file.cab

You can also put the file back in the cab file with the same utility

i6comp r file_to_put_back.txt some_cab_file.cab
-----------------------------------------------------------
e_wise.ZIP (97.47 KB)
extr_cab.ZIP (101.93 KB)
exwise05.ZIP (109.66 KB)
i5comp201.ZIP (100.69 KB)
i6comp020.ZIP (121.02 KB)
i6comp103b.ZIP (73.13 KB)
iscab.ZIP (374.39 KB)
isdcc122.ZIP (55.35 KB)
isdcc210.ZIP (96.39 KB)
wisdec100b.ZIP (367.53 KB)
zipscan_eval_setup.ZIP (876.67 KB)

Patching SQL Server still has a long way to go !

Patching SQL Server still has many necessary improvements.  It's an endless cycle.  Service Packs and Cumulative Updates.  The release process of the patches is much better, but the technical windows installer portion of the process is painful.  Ever look at a machine that has 4 SQL Server instances?  Take a close look at your c:\windows\, C:\windows\installer, c:\Prog...\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\LOG\Hotfix.  Where I come from we call that a cluster f***!

If you have 20-50 SQL Instances, it's a manageable process, when your dealing with 100's and 1000's it's a nightmare.

Troubleshooting the process is a kin to the "needle in the haystack" analogy.  Recently while applying SP3 to a SQL Server I received the following error:

...
Error Number              : 11032
Error Description         : Unable to install Windows Installer MSP file
------------------------------------------------------

Fortunately I've seen so many errors applying SQL Server service packs and patches (remember we patch 100's to 1000's so I'm not saying these errors are common place, but even 5% can generate a huge volume of work).   Service pack Errors I've Seen.
 http://www.lifeasbob.com/2008/01/29/CumulativeHotfix53215InstallIssues.aspx

When searching for the 11032 error cause, the summary.log leads to another file, some sqlrun_sql.msp.log.  Always search for “return value 3” in any MSI logs to quickly find the error.  I found the following in the log file:

MSI (s) (9C:78) [20:33:17:978]: Invoking remote custom action. DLL: C:\WINDOWS\Installer\MSI7F3.tmp, Entrypoint: InstallFTERef
FTECa.DLL: INFO: FTE: InstallFTERef(), Entering...
FTECa.DLL: INFO: FTE: GetFTERefInstallParams: FTERef : ?*
FTECa.DLL: ERROR: FTE: InstallFTERef: Fail to create FTERef file: D:\data\FTData\noiseCHS.txt,Err=3
MSI (s) (9C:FC) [20:33:18:322]: User policy value 'DisableRollback' is 0
MSI (s) (9C:FC) [20:33:18:322]: Machine policy value 'DisableRollback' is 0
Action ended 20:33:18: InstallFinalize. Return value 3.

Sure enough the path d:\data was wrong, it should be d:\mssql.1\data,  I copied the FTData directory to a new one I created called d:\mssql.1\data and it completed successfully.  It's not even worth the effort to think how this got screwed up, the ftdata directory is picked up in the registry, so someone moved the directory or hacked the registry.

We did find one behavior change with SP3, DBCC CheckIdent.  DBCC CheckIdent used to successfully take Null parameter, now it does not, easy enough to correct by testing for Null and replacing with a zero.  We found this through a job that resets the identity value of table, the job began failing when we applied sp3, sure enough testing on sp2 shows it was successful.  Probably this is a good thing that sp3 tightened up the parameter validation on DBCC CheckIdent.  Example below:

Declare @maxId Integer
Select @maxId = Max([Identity_column]) + 1 From [Some Table]
Print '--Resetting seed to' + Convert(varchar(10),@maxId)
DBCC CheckIdent ('Some TABLE',reseed,@maxId)

Sunday
 Smoked Baby back ribs
 Rice
 Broccoli

Monday
 Chicken Strips
 Macaroni and Cheese
 Green Beans

Tuesday
 Spaghetti with Meat balls
 Broccoli
 Spinach-Salad
 Bread

Wednesday
 Meat Loaf
 Mashed Potatoes
 Asparagus
 Peas

Thursday
 Leftovers

Friday
 McDonalds

Saturday 
 Hamburgers and Hotdogs
 Baked Beans

What's for Dinner 7/19 - 7/25

Sunday
 Smoked Corn Beef
 Potatoes
 Beans
 Salad

Monday
 Taco's
 Chimichanga

Tuesday
 Jenny-O
 Mashed Potatoes
 Buttered Noodles
 Broccoli
 Corn

Wednesday
 Pirogies
 Kielbasa
 red horseradish (which is blended with beets)
 Salad
 Sliced Tomatoes 

Thursday
 Left-Overs

Friday
 Pizza

Saturday 
 Grilled Chicken

What's for Dinner 7/19 - 7/25

Sunday
 Steak
 Baked Potatoes
 Broccoli
 Asparagus

Monday
 Roitesserie Chicken
 Basmati Rice
 Peas
 Rolls

Tuesday
 

Wednesday
 

Thursday
 

Friday

 Saturday 
 

Sunday
 BBQ Beef Brisket
 Green Beans
 Corn
 Bread

Monday
 Ham Steak
 Macaroni and Cheese
Carrots
Peas 

Tuesday
 Chicken Paprikash with Egg Noodles
 Steamed Broccoli
 Sliced Tomatoes

Wednesday
 Salisbury Steak
 Mashed Potatoes
 Asparagus
 Left-over vegetables

Thursday
 Left-Overs 

Friday
 Baked Fish with Basmati rice
 Stewed Tomatoes
 Mixed Vegetables
 Rolls

Saturday 
Pizza