Sure, it’s loaded with features like shared datasets, an Office-like interface, and wizards that make it easy for power users to make the move from spreadsheets to ad hoc reports that they design themselves. But it seems this can cause some job-security angst amongst uneasy IT people used to holding the keys to the kingdom and doling out half-baked reports to the data-starved masses.

There’s really no need for concern, as the shared datasets still need the skills of a dba or developer familiar with the back-end data and all its esoteric table and column names and datatypes. In fact, freedom from the chore of mundane report creation might actually mean that dba and developer skills can be applied where they are needed in more creative database applications and automation projects.

Here’s hoping that requests from consumers of data for Report Builder 3 grow in intensity and persistence until all the political roadblocks at your workplace are flushed away.

XBRL is an acronym for eXtensible Business Reporting Language. It is an xml variant designed to standardize financial report submission. It is already required by many government agencies and financial bodies around the world, including the SEC in the US and just about every government department in Australia.

Although there is software available to aid in the creation of xbrl files or “instance documents”, most tools seem to be geared more toward the creation of custom “taxonomies” (basically dsd files).

I plan to see if I can create xbrl output files directly from SQL Server in a manner not unlike outputting data-driven html source code from MySQL using php’s “echo” function.

I’ll keep you posted…

I have spent the last couple of weeks reviewing Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services and am very impressed so far. I used a crude version of Reporting Services many years ago with VB 6 and I must say that the most recent version rivals and/or surpasses any reporting tool I have used to date from Access reports to PowerBuilder data windows to Crystal Reports.

I am really looking forward to working with data instead of students for a change.

I just finished delivering a four week course on using ASP.NET for E-Commerce. I was a little bit rusty. The last time I taught ASP.NET was three years ago at Centennial College. Thankfully, Visual Studio came to the rescue as usual and I was soon creating connection strings and dragging and dropping with ease. The inventor of Microsoft’s “Intellisense” feature should win the Nobel Prize for computing if there is such a thing.

I can still remember coding an entire desktop database application using VB 4 and having to memorize all variable and object names. The trick then was to name things in mixed case and then type all your code in lower case and watch for your code to change case as you went to each new line, verifying that object and variable names were spelled correctly and would be recognized during compilation. Now C# code almost writes itself, complete with drop-down argument lists for overloaded functions. Eclipse has a similar feature and Dreamweaver has “code-hinting” but neither seem to work as seamlessly as Intellisense does for me. I have taken to using Visual Studio to write and edit HTML and XML files because of it.

The course used the 2008 version. Haven’t had a chance to try 2010, but it should be more of the same…

Rootkits, packet sniffers, spyware, bot-nets, keystroke loggers — it’s enough to scare you off the Internet… well, maybe not, but one chapter from the text on the subject — the excellent “Counter Hack Reloaded” by Ed Skoudis — sticks in my mind. It was how attackers take advantage of shoddy security to take control of a vulnerable computer online and then cover their tracks and prevent other attackers from getting in after them by hardening the security features the unaware machine owner should have had in place to begin with. As scary as the shadowy world of identity theft and computer fraud can be, you have to be amazed by and almost admire the depth of knowledge and skill it takes to do it.

Once you get past the interface though, things start to change. Try setting up IIS 7 to run jsp files and you may stall at step number forty-something. Setting up Apache to serve up asp files is a different story and is doable with the help of online contributors and advisors.

I guess some things are never going to change. It’s always going to be Microsoft vs. everybody else.

I was recently recruited as a last-minute replacement for an instructor teaching a Java course and have been pleasantly surprised by the breadth and depth of Java tools available out there for free, tools like Eclipse and NetBeans. Furthermore, Oracle seems to have embraced Java as a way to promote its open source/anti-Microsoft approach to development. The old Sun web content is being assimilated into the Oracle site. In a way it fits. Oracle has been good about giving developers the tools they need for free, although they may not have been as slick as Visual Studio, they also didn’t carry the large price tag.

I must say that my interest in Java — this time around as a web development tool — has been re-kindled.

I have been teaching a group of prospective web developers for a few weeks now. They seem unwilling and sometimes even unable to use anything but a WYSIWYG editor such as Dreamweaver. Furthermore, they do not seem the least bit interested in the code behind the pages, no matter how badly Dreamweaver messes it up. All that matters is what shows.

When I was learning programming, we took it as a point of pride to understand the inner workings of the application code we wrote. Have IDE’s like Visual Studio put an end to all that?

The “surface appeal is all that matters” attitude has crept through the programming ranks and into IT management. A year or so ago I interviewed for a developer job with a manager that was in his mid 30’s. When I mentioned that I knew HTML, he said it didn’t matter because “nobody uses HTML anymore.” Say what? I didn’t want to leave the wrong impression by informing him that ALL web pages are coded with HTML — even the ones created using a WYSIWYG editor.

With more and more people using template and CMS-driven tools to build sites, there is no desire to learn web development from the ground up: tag by tag. I have even seen job postings for “Joomla! developers.”

I guess the silver lining is the fact that with less and less people out there that know what they’re doing, those of us that know how to actually create applications instead of just using them will have more and more job security.