Does anybody know how to get xlsx support for SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services without upgrading to SQL Server 2012 or 3rd party tools? - sql-server-2008-r2

Does anybody know how to get export to XLSX support for SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services without upgrading to SQL Server 2012 or using any 3rd party tools?

Apart from developing your own render? Nope. I haven't been able to find ANY information on that by the way.
Apart from going to SQL Server 2012 (a 3rd party renderer may be more cost effective) you could develop your own ASP.Net app while using EPPlus that would link from the report. This stackoverflow post may help start you off with the code.

Related

Sending Email from Classic ASP on Windows 2012 R2 Server Core

We have a classic ASP application we just migrated from Windows 2008 R2 to Windows 2012 R2 Core.
Apparently Core versions of windows don't include cdosys or cdonts and thus our application can no longer send email.
Most of the advice I can find suggests using system.net.mail for sending email which of course is a .NET technology and we're using classic ASP.
We do have .NET on our system but I'm not sure if classic ASP could talk to a .NET page for sending email?
Besides using a 3rd party COM utility like Persits ASPEmail are there any native ways of working around this?
We do NOT want to convert the server core instance to the full version of windows. That's killing an ant with a bazooka. This is only impacting two places in our code and everything else works just fine on core.
Unfortunately, CDONTS was superseded by CDOSYS some time ago. When migrating from Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2012 I had this exact same issue, but managed to find a fix.
It involves taking a copy of the cdonts.dll file from the Windows Server 2008 Server and adding it to the Windows Server 2012 server then registering it with the relevant COM subsystem without any need to change code or install a 3rd Party library.
Hopefully the same method will work with Core but I haven't tested it.

Any issues using SQL Server 2008 R2 backup on SQL Server 2014

Our website is backed by a database written using SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. I am in India working with an outsource org and the only thing they can get is SQL server 2014 developer edition, which supports the compression options that are used with 2008 r2 enterprise. I have verified on my box that I can install 2014 developer, attach the mdf of the 2008 r2 database which gets set to 2008 compatibility, launch our site and everything appears to work. But I am concerned about potential issues if the database behaves in an unexpected way in 2014. The biggest issue I've read about is if TSQL code is written against a server running in compatibility mode, that may not behave as expected after it is deployed to the server running the actual version being emulated. These guys aren't going to be doing any database work, just website work, so that part may be of no concern. With that in mind, what are potential issues that we might run into?
Going forward with MS SQL backups has never been an issue. 2005 backup restored on 2008, no problem.
Going backwards won't work. 2008 backup, restoring onto 2005, won't work.

SQL Server 2008 R2 Express: Management Tools Missing from Feature Selection

I am trying to install SQL Server 2008 R2 Express with the SQL Server Management Studio.
However, the Management Tools feature does not seem to be selectable. The screen-shot below shows which Features are available for me to select:
I have made sure that the SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Objects was installed!
I have tried both answered methods at Can't install SQL Server 2008 R2 management tool (complete) and they both do not seem to work for me, I still do not see Management Tools. Upgrading the Edition under the Maintenance section and Uninstalling/Re-installing the SQL Server had no additional effects. The files I am trying to work with to get this to work are:
SQLEXPR_x64_ENU.exe - This is Service Pack 3
SQLManagementStudio_x64_ENU.exe - The file name fooled me, since there is no management studio feature selection!
The question is, why does Microsoft makes it so difficult?
I am using a Windows 7, 64-bit machine. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
You should separately download Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Management Studio Express from Microsoft at
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7593
SQLEXPRADV_x64_ENU.exe contains everything and is the best choice for new installs.

Is Crystal Report 9 compatible with MS server 2008?

I am going to pay for some classes to learn MS SQL server 2008.
To prepare for the classes, I need to install MS SQL server 2008 in my home PC so that
I can do some self-learning myself after each lesson.
I came a cross a PC store that got a few second-hand copies of SQL server 2008 and
as they (the shop keepers) said, if I bought a copy from them, they would give me a free copy of Crystal Report CD (version 9) to me as a gift.
I am new to both MS SQL server 2008 and Crsytal Report.
I don't know if Crystal Report 9 is compatible with MS SQL server 2008
Please advise and help.
Unless you are going to need Crystal Reports for this class or a class you are taking in the near future, or need some of the extra functionality of the full version SQL Server for your class (such as Replication), why not just use the free SQL Server Express Edition? Unless your class concerns administration of SQL Server, SQL Server Express should suit your purposes and be a lot cheaper.
CR9 should be compatible to some extent with MS SQLServer 2008 - even if the Crystal native drivers for MS SQLServer don't work (I would expect that they would), you should still be able to use ODBC drivers.
That said, unless the second-hand copies are extremely cheap, why not just download SQLServer Express for free, as suggested by the other posters?

Which windows server 2008 edition for a DB server

We are uprading our servers and we're going to have 3 servers - 1 db server and 2 frontend web servers.
For the web servers we'll use 2008 Web edition but we can't decide which edition to use for the db.
At first we were thinking of using Standard edition but with our host it works out 10 times more expensive per month than the Web edition.
Our third option is to use Data center edition which is only cost 5 times more than the Web edition.
Can we and should we run a SQL 2008 on Windows Server Web edition? If not which edition should we choose?
Thanks.
Minimum requirements for all versions of SQL 2008 are here.
Server 2008 Web is listed as a supported OS, so you should be fine.
EDIT: I should clarify that it's possible to run SQL 2008 on Web Edition of windows server, but I'm not sure of what the limitations of doing so are. Server Web has more limitations than Server Standard, but I'm not sure what they are - be it hardware related or whatnot.