Swimming Pool Wallpaper

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Please contact me for business use.

Force Windows Update check from command line

Here are a few commands for running the Windows Update Agent from a command line:

Force detection of updates:
wuauclt /detectnow

Force reporting status to an Windows Update Server:
wuauclt /r /ReportNow

Stop and start the automatic updates service:
net stop wuauserv
net start wuauserv

To help troubleshooting here’s where the log is normally.
%systemroot%\WindowsUpdate.log

Some more documentation on Microsoft’s Technet site.

Spring sun

Spring has sprung

Current Book: Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet

SQL Server Reporting Services IIF statement Error

I have a column in a report that calculates a variance between two other columns and displays a percentage.
Some of the columns end up with a zero which would result in a divide by zero error.

So I wrote the following IIF statement that should have handled these situations and just filled in a zero:

=iif(Fields!RBC_Prev_Year.Value=0,0,(Fields!RBC.Value-Fields!RBC_Prev_Year.Value)/Fields!RBC_Prev_Year.Value)

The problem is, well it didn’t work.  My report would still end up with an #Error value in the column.  After some searching I found the solution on this website.

Essentially even though I was trying to handle the divide by zero issue with the IIF statement reporting services still evaluated each part of the statement before displaying the results which causes the error.

By re-writing it like this:

=iif(Fields!RBC_Prev_Year.Value=0,0,(Fields!RBC.Value-Fields!RBC_Prev_Year.Value)/
iif(Fields!RBC_Prev_Year.Value=0,1,Fields!RBC_Prev_Year.Value))

It works!  Weird, but oh well.

SQL Server Reporting Services repeat header row on each page from a table/tablix

Some things are not as they seem.  Like in the Tablix (data table) properties there’s a setting that says “Repeat header rows on each page.”  Checking this does not repeat the header rows on each page.

I found some information elsewhere that says you also have to:

1. In the grouping pane, Go to advanced mode
(click on the small black down arrow on the far right of the grouping pane.  A bunch of bars that say Static will show up.)

2. Select the corresponding (Static) item in the row group hierarchy.  (not the ones in the Column Groups side.  For me it was the first one in the Row Groups)
3. In the properties grid, set RepeatOnNewPage to true

4. KeepwithGroup to After
5. FixedData to True

After doing this my row headers started showing up on all pages.  A lot of work for something that seems like should have been taken care of by the first setting.

Wallpaper – Desert

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Current Book: Persuader by Lee Child

Wallpaper – Abstract Light