"We have met the enemy and he is us."

- Pogo

So I've spent the last two days going crazy trying to get Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services working on my laptop. I was getting an ASP.NET error when I tried to hit the report server's Web user interface (i.e. http://localhost/Reports). My error (for the datasphere search engines) was along the lines of:

Server Error in '/Reports'
Application.

Parser Error

Description: An error occurred during the parsing of a resource
required to service this request. Please review the following specific parse
error details and modify your source file appropriately.

Parser Error Message: Could not load type
'Microsoft.ReportingServices.UI.GlobalApp'.

Source Error:
Line 1: <%@ Application Codebehind="Global.asax.cs" Inherits="Microsoft.ReportingServices.UI.GlobalApp" %>

Source File: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL
Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportManager\global.asax

Line: 1

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework
Version:2.....

After much grasping at thin straws from the short list of online references to this error, and getting nowhere, I had gone so far as to uninstall and re-install MSSQL Server 2005 and IIS twice. I then spent a ton of time:

1. Running Process Monitor to see if file or registry ACLs were preventing something from getting to what it needed.
2. Modifying ACLs on the ASPNET temporary files folder.
3. Modifying ACLs on the Report Manager folder.
4. Modifying Local Security Policy settings.
5. Comparing a working SSRS install on a W2K3 Server machine.
6. Copying SSRS files from a working machine.
7. Repeatedly running aspnet_regiis with various parameters
8. Playing with the GAC trying to get my stupid laptop to "understand" the parent assembly (i.e. ReportingServicesWebUserInterface.dll) it couldn't seem to find.
9. Swearing, begging, giving up, swearing some more.

Then, in the fashion such successful epiphanies seem to come in - i.e. randomly, sans connection to proceeding efforts - I remembered that on some work laptops we had had problems with Mortgage Cadence Orchestrator installs and had ended up modifying the machine Web.Config file (i.e. C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG\Web.Config) to remove a line that was causing MCO to fail to launch.


<configuration>
blahblahblah...
<system.web>
<authorization>
blahblahblah...
</authorization>

<browsercaps>
blahblahblah...
</browsercaps>

<clienttargets>
blahblahblah...
</clienttargets>

<assemblies>
blahblahblah...
<add assembly="*">
blahblahblah...
</assemblies>
blahblahblah...

This wildcard directive to load all assemblies in the Web application's folder caused the MCO app to try and load non-.NET DLL files that were in the MCO app folder. I never heard a good explanation as to why this caused problems on only some consultants' laptops. Regardless, our "quick-fix" to circumvent that problem was to delete that wildcard line in the machine's Web.config file (this was known as the "Web.config line 61 wildcard problem"). Yet, now when I returned that line to the laptop's Web.Config file - SHAZAM! - the report server started working. Two days gone due to short-routing around a problem many months ago. Life at times seems nothing but dealing with the unintended consequences of previous actions/decisions...and I'm talking not just about I.T., parenting, or rescued turtles.

Timmy the Transplanted Turtle

So we have a new turtle at our house. B named him Timmy. Our neighbor Tim found the turtle trying to sneak into his house and called us assuming it was our lost turtle. After a week of waiting for somebody to call on the posted "Found Turtle" signs, my son was pretty set on keeping the turtle. So when we rec'd a phone call from the owner asking about his lost turtle, B was pretty upset. Fortunately (or so it seemed at the time), the owner was very generous and told us that as he had another turtle and had only owned the lost one for a few weeks before it snuck away, he thought it would be best if we kept him. B was thrilled.

Now after $200 at the vet (as Mer doesn't do reptiles - even turtles like Timmy) plus God know how much time online learning about box turtles, and around $250 in turtle cage stuff (e.g. heaters, UV light, food bowls, water bowl, hide, etc) we have the latest addition to the family.

He's actually quite fast and a much better climber than you'd expect from a turtle. Best of all? He doesn't bark or shit on the carpet.

Book Review (sorta): The Balanced Scorecard

So it appears I'm many years late to the KPI, Management Dashboard party. I recently finished reading "The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy Into Action" by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton. Man, what a slog. I read some pretty boring stuff (at least according to the wife) - e.g. Microsoft Press, Wrox, but this book was a real effort to finish. Not that the book is written poorly, just that the topic and their coverage of it is drawn-out and dry.

I guess the hardest part of reading the book was suppressing the constant "Duh!" that echoed in my head. Perhaps because this book and movement is over ten years old, the mindset is just a background perspective I have been unknowingly immersed in for years, thus taking it all for granted. Yet, the idea, and more importantly - the use of, running a business with a strategy that is widely understood by all employees, highly quantifiable, wider than quarterly financial metrics, and based on causal relationships that are reviewed and modified (including abandoned) still appears to be rare in the business world, IMNHO. I think that most businesses want to believe that they have a company strategy that tracks performance towards corporate goals and engenders a work culture of results=rewards, yet most organizations I've seen appear to be doing little more than speaking to that idea, and mostly making knee-jerk, short-term, reactionary moves generally based on paying the bills month to month.

I have a lot of respect for business owners, and I myself know how nervous I get when my income is erratic, so I can understand the natural tendency to struggle by month to month and not have the time/energy it takes to create and evangelize a Balanced Scorecard type of strategy. Yet this book and many more like it, seem to make a huge case for the efficacy of these more measured, groupwise systems. Hi Ho.