My day fighting the Evil Empire
Mar. 26th, 2004 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carynb
Microsoft, that is.
And I can just say, as someone who writes code that has to run in the environment, how very, very much I hate XP? As a user, it's okay. But Microsoft went and changed all the underneath stuff, and now things don't work anymore. Argh!
I wrote, a while ago, a MS Word mail merge function that we run from within our application. My application is written is straight C, so we use COM to do this. I pass a mail merge document a query string (well, 2 actually), and a connection string that consists of a dsn name, a user name, and a password, so that it can access the database. The mail merge then runs, populates the document, and the user can save the completed form (a contract, for instance) somewhere on their hard drive or network. Works like a charm in NT, 2000, Win98 - I think we've even had it working on Win95.
Won't work in XP. To be more precise - won't work sometimes in XP. If the query is complicated - summarized fields, multiple joins, outer joins - it works. Not perfectly - the user is still asked to select a data source, but if you just hit the "open" button without selecting anything, it works. If the query is simple - "select * from eventlist where booking_number = 123" - it doesn't work. I get a error, stating that Word could not open the data source.
So, I spent most of the morning futzing with the connection string - documentation on the COM functions of anything is pretty much non-existent at this point, so it's all trial and error - and getting nowhere. I gave up around lunch time, and told the owner of the company I'd have to try to do some more research and get back to it.
Carpooling home tonight, and I'm bitching about the problem. C, the guy I give a ride to most days, just looks at me and says "Windows XP can't handle select * as a SQL selection string."
WTF? I mean really, What the Fuck? His company has run into the problem in MS Access, apparently, but it's probably the same thing. How can Windows XP (or possibly Office XP) not handle the simplest query there is? How is that possible?
So, first thing Monday morning I try making my queries more complicated, and see if that solves the problem. If it does, I think I should sue Microsoft for the lost time...
Anyway, I'm off to a "drink all my booze so I don't have to move it" party that a friend from work is having. She's about to pack up her car and head for Vancouver, and she's trying to get rid of just about everything she owns. Should be a fun evening :-)
And I can just say, as someone who writes code that has to run in the environment, how very, very much I hate XP? As a user, it's okay. But Microsoft went and changed all the underneath stuff, and now things don't work anymore. Argh!
I wrote, a while ago, a MS Word mail merge function that we run from within our application. My application is written is straight C, so we use COM to do this. I pass a mail merge document a query string (well, 2 actually), and a connection string that consists of a dsn name, a user name, and a password, so that it can access the database. The mail merge then runs, populates the document, and the user can save the completed form (a contract, for instance) somewhere on their hard drive or network. Works like a charm in NT, 2000, Win98 - I think we've even had it working on Win95.
Won't work in XP. To be more precise - won't work sometimes in XP. If the query is complicated - summarized fields, multiple joins, outer joins - it works. Not perfectly - the user is still asked to select a data source, but if you just hit the "open" button without selecting anything, it works. If the query is simple - "select * from eventlist where booking_number = 123" - it doesn't work. I get a error, stating that Word could not open the data source.
So, I spent most of the morning futzing with the connection string - documentation on the COM functions of anything is pretty much non-existent at this point, so it's all trial and error - and getting nowhere. I gave up around lunch time, and told the owner of the company I'd have to try to do some more research and get back to it.
Carpooling home tonight, and I'm bitching about the problem. C, the guy I give a ride to most days, just looks at me and says "Windows XP can't handle select * as a SQL selection string."
WTF? I mean really, What the Fuck? His company has run into the problem in MS Access, apparently, but it's probably the same thing. How can Windows XP (or possibly Office XP) not handle the simplest query there is? How is that possible?
So, first thing Monday morning I try making my queries more complicated, and see if that solves the problem. If it does, I think I should sue Microsoft for the lost time...
Anyway, I'm off to a "drink all my booze so I don't have to move it" party that a friend from work is having. She's about to pack up her car and head for Vancouver, and she's trying to get rid of just about everything she owns. Should be a fun evening :-)
