Saturday 9 July 2016

SSRS - Custom Period Filters

Problem:

Just wondering if the reports published on SQL Server Reporting Services can be customized to have a predefined period filters like Last Week, Last Month, Last Quarter, etc.

By: Anonymous

Solution:

You have few options to work around this, which are given below:

1. Dynamic Parameter

Basically, your underlying query or stored procedure needs the values for the From and To paramteres to apply in the where clause of the query. You can do this by first creating a mutli valued Period parameter, with values like, Last Week, Last Month, etc specified as available values. The From and To parameters can then be set up in such a way that it fetches the default value from a query, which takes the value from the Period parameter and then return the corresponding From and To values respectively. In these, the Period Parameter shall be positioned above the From and To parameters. The query can be as simple as

SELECT 
CASE 
WHEN @Period = 'LW' THEN DATEADD(D,((DATEPART(dw, GETDATE())-1)*-1)-7,GETDATE())
WHEN @PEriod = 'LM' THEN DATEADD(M,-1,DATEADD(D,(DAY(GETDATE())-1)*-1, GETDATE()))
END AS FROM_DATE

for the default values of the From parameter. You may extend this idea and use it different ways to make a parameter dynamically derive a value based on a previous parameter. Note that the order of the parameter is important as the parameters are constructed sequentially and there is nothing like an onChange event that you can think of.

2. Let the SQL Query / Procedure do the work

The second alternative is to put in a logic similar to the above within the Report Query or Stored Procedure, so that the user just selects the period filter and the SQL Server interprets it appropriately and returns the appropriate results. The only difference with this option is that the From and To Filters need not be designed in the report and the user won't see it on screen.

3. Wrap the report within an Application

Just in case, you are rendering the reports within an Application, like a ASP.NET application or a Windows Forms Application, then you can have the complete control on the Filters in the presentation layer of your application. For instance in this case, you accept a Period Filter from the user in your front end application and then transform it to an appropriate From and To dates to the ReportViewer component and get the report rendered accordingly.





Sunday 3 July 2016

Issues in Signing a .NET Assembly using .pfx file

Problem:

I have procured a code signing certificate with a view to ensure that one of application that we intend to distribute to external users is signed so that the same can be trusted by the end users. I imported the certificate into the certificate store and used it successfully to sign the Click Once Manifest using the Signing tab in the Projec Properties dialog in Visual Studio 2013. But I could not have the assembly signed. I exported the certificate from the store as a .pfx file and tried using it for signing the assembly, but am getting issues like "Private Key not Found", while the Private key is very much present in the .pfx file.

By: Rajkumar David

Solution:

Visual Studio 2013 has known issues in handling PKCS# 12 certificate files as it cannot handle files with multilpe certificates in the CA certificate chain. Visual studio may not still consider such certificates for signing the assembly because of the KeySpec Parameter, which is usually set as AT_KEYEXCHANGE(1), whereas Visual Studio expects this to be AT_SIGNATURE(2). It is possible that while requesting the certificate, the KeySpec is set as 1 and as such the certificate is generated with the value as 1. You may verify CSR that you have submitted to the CA to check this.

OK, now what do you with that certificate? You have option to import such certificates with KeySpec set as AT_SIGNATUR. The Windows Servers from 2003 onwards have a commandline certificate import utility - certutil.exe. This command allows you to import the certificate with the right KeySpec parameter. Use the following command to do this:

certutil -importPFX -user <pfxfilename> AT_SIGNATURE

After importing the certificate using the above command into the certificate store and then export it back as .pfx file from the store for assembly signing within Visual Studio. This should resolve the given problem.

More on the CertUtil command can be found here.