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Quick Fixes on SSIS with Oracle Data Sources

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I’m currently in the process of building out an ODS (Operational Data Store) that will integrate data from multiple systems and make that data available for reporting using Spotfire and other BI tools.

Both the ODS DBMS and the first system that will be used as a source for the data in the ODS run on Oracle Database. I am using Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 64-bit to build an SSIS package to flow the data from the source into the ODS.

In debugging the SSIS package, I’ve run into a few things that make troubleshooting much easier. The first thing to know is that the Oracle Database (in this case) is a 32-bit system. The first thing that must be done after loading the SSIS package into Visual Studio is making sure that the Run64BitRuntime setting is set to False in the project’s Properties box. (This can be found in the PROJECT menu.)

Since the data sources for the ODS are Oracle, the SQL queries used to pull data must conform to Oracle syntax. To prevent things like SSIS automatically adding semicolons to the queries (and preventing me from adding them myself), I set the BypassPrepare property to True. This should allow the query to run the same way in SSIS as it does in SQL Developer. (If this is set to False, SSIS will parse the query rather than passing it to Oracle.) This setting made writing queries much easier, as I could test them in SQL Developer and paste them into SSIS without having to rewrite them to conform to SSIS.

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Completing the Core iOS 7 Code School Course Using XCode 6.x

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One of the classes that must be completed on the iOS Path for Code School is Core iOS 7. When this course was published, version 7 was the most recent iOS release and the IDE used was XCode 5 from Apple.

This course may be done using XCode 6.x, and most of the exercises will run on the iOS 8/8.1 Simulator that comes with this version of XCode. However, due to some changes between iOS 7 and iOS 8, some of the exercises will successfully compile and run, but the associated tests will fail.

The solution to this problem is that the iOS 7.1 Simulator must be added to XCode 6.x. This is done through XCode Preferences on the Downloads tab. If you are using a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, make sure that it is plugged in before attempting to download anything through the XCode Preferences interface. If you are running on battery, the download never starts and no error message or warning is given.

Also, before selecting Test in your application, make sure that the active scheme is a device running iOS 7.1. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus options only run on iOS 8, so choosing “iPhone 5s (7.1)” should work fine.

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Errors Related to the Use of CFAJAX Tags in ColdFusion

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This is a quick change that is easily missed when adding AJAX functionality to an old ColdFusion site with CFAJAX tags. In my case, I was adding this functionality to a site that had originally been developed about ten years ago. This site runs on a Windows server with IIS.

After getting the site upgraded and working properly in the dev and test environments, I discovered that several errors were happening in prod that never happened in test or dev. The most common of these errors was “ColdFusion is undefined”.

Of all things, the Virtual Directory to CFIDE had never been created. As is so common, major problems can be caused by tiny bugs in code, or in this case, in the Web server configuration itself.

Create a Virtual Directory in the root of the website and name it CFIDE. It should, in most cases, point to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\CFIDE. Once this is done, the CFAJAX errors should be no more!

UPDATE via Gavin Pickin (@gpickin):