Radderz’ Randomness

The ‘SQL Server Import and Export Wizard’ can fail when trying to import a spreadsheet which was originally created by Open Office and converted by Excel into an Excel format.

Symptom

Symptoms of this problem can be seen when you edit mappings within the Wizard there are always 255 columns with the extra columns being prefixed with an ‘F’.

Even though these extra columns are not selected for import, you will get a violation of a datatype for the first column.

Solution

If this is the case, simply copy and paste the data from one document to a new blank document created by Excel.

Versions

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 10.0.2531.0
SQLServer 2008
Excel 2007
OpenOffice

Techie Bug, SQL

I’ve just discovered yet another glitch with the ‘Import Data’ tool within the ‘Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio’. It took me a while to figure this one out as the error message was of a slightly unhelpful wild goose chase.

Error

If you have a column within excel that contains a mix of both data and null cells, the import tool fails even if the destination column is set to ‘Nullable’ within ‘Column Mappings’.

“Text was truncated or one or more characters had no match in the target code page.”

Solution

The only work around I have found is to separate the null columns and import them separately.

As alternative I think you can place a single quote (’) in each null cell, this forces the excel engine to register the cell as text rather then a null type and import it as an empty piece of data; I’ve used this technique before to force mixed numeric and text fields to be solely text, as using ‘format cell’ and selecting ‘text’ still imports the cell as a numeric value. I haven’t tested it for this scenario, but it sounds plausible that it will have the same effect with null values.

Versions

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 10.0.2531.0
SQLServer 2008
Excel 2007

Techie Bug, SQL

I’ve noticed that in some of my developments using Ajax.Net the ModalPopupExtender flashes up breifly while some of the elements within the page finish loading. I have noticed this for browsers IE and Firefox, but not Chrome.

There is a very simple solution, you just have to remember to do it everytime you want to use a ModalPopup. Add the style=”display:none;” attribute to the asp:panel you are using as the extender, and this will ensure the ModalPopup remains invisible while the page loads.

Techie .net, Bug, ModalPopupExtender, Quickies

I’ve just installed a new version of the AdWords Editor onto a new Vista machine which had Chrome and Firefox installed.

Both Chrome, Firefox and AdWords Editor use SQLite for their database. I’m not sure whether there is a conflict with the way these are installed, but every now and then the AdWords Editor software crashes, and windows reports that there was an error with SQLite.

I have sucessfully resolved this problem by downloading the latest SQLite binary libraries, and extracting the sqlite3.dll into the Windows System32 directory. Upon reloading the AdWords Editor, everything begins to work fine.

Techie AdWords, Bug, Quickies, SQL

This may sound slightly bizarre, but if you are using atlas in dotnet, and add a meta tag within the head of the page, it prevents partial rendering of the UpdatePanel control.

I couldn’t believe it, and in fact it took me a good few hours to figure out what was happening - Sure enough, it is a bug in atlas, fixed in the July release.

–Radderz 11:50, 1 September 2006 (BST)

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In addition to this bug, there seems to be a similar one which has not been fixed with the upgrade. If you access your application settings via the following within the page head, it causes an identical response. It only appears to occur in certain situations (In my one, I was using the appSettings to fill in part of the path to a stylesheet).

<%=ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("URL.Root") %>

For the time being, I can’t think of a situation where this can’t be avoided. But if one does arise, I’ve noticed that you can place this within html comments, it works fine.

<!-- -->

What is the use of this you may say! We’ll, actually, javascript can execute within html comments, so you set a js variable, and use it where you need ;)

–Radderz 20:26, 7 September 2006 (BST)

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For existing applications, the above errors can be solved by rebuilding the web.config file from scratch, using the updated atlas template.

I’m still unsure of which line in the web.config causes these bugs, but I have not had much time other then initial inspection to investigate. If you end up spotting it, please add it here :)

–Radderz 09:21, 14 September 2006 (BST)

Techie .net, Atlas (ajax), Bug