Friday 14 November 2014

Whos Heart 2014 - Last Voice Guessed as Nigel Kennedy

Whos on Heart 2014 has now been won with the final voice identified as Nigel Kennedy the classical violinist. The last voice has taken nearly 12 months to identify but the winner now gets a fantastic £100,000!

The other voices from Whos on Heart 2014 were Stevie Nicks and Ben Miller

Whos = Ben Miller
On = Stevie Nicks
Heart = Nigel Kennedy


Whos Heart 2014 Last Voice Nigel Kennedy
Whos Heart 2014 Last Voice Nigel Kennedy

Winshock Microsoft Windows Bug Patch - Old Windows Vulnerability Revealed

New Windows bug/vulnerability revealed called Winshock. This has been present in all versions of Windows since Windows95.

Nicknamed WinShock (like BASH that was nick named ShellShock), it is rated 9.3 on the CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) vulnerability scale.  However, there is no proof of concept code yet to show how it can be exploited.
Winshock Microsoft Windows Bug Patch - Old Windows Vulnerability Revealed
Winshock Microsoft Windows Bug Patch - Old Windows Vulnerability Revealed

I was made aware of this yesterday - Microsoft released a number of patches which are already being released to home PCs via the Windows Update process.

Interestingly when I googled WinShock, Google automatically thought you meant WinSock (which is a communications protocol), and you have to tell it you actually mean WinShock.

Link to BBC News story

Microsoft patches '19-year-old' bug.  Microsoft patches a critical bug in its software that had existed for 19 years, according to IBM researchers. Read more:

Thursday 13 November 2014

Date_Diff Error - Gives Negative Values for SAP Data Services 4.2 (BODI 14.2.2/14.2.3) Chan

Date_Diff problem with SAP BODI Data Services 4.2 - 14.2/14.2.2/14.2.3 (BI Business Objects)

I've found a problem with the values being output in one of my Data Services jobs where date diff was reporting negative numbers. This function compares dates against each other to display an elapsed time.

 Yesterday we upgraded our Data Services to BI4.2 (internally shown as BI 14.2.3) and this has affected jobs using date_diff since the upgrade.

It appears that SAP have changed the function date_diff in  Data Services 14.2.2 (BI4.2) so the date inputs are reversed which means it now gives negative numbers.
 
The date_diff function compares date1 and date2

 Originally date1 was the later date (end date) and date2 was earlier (start date). As of Data Services 4.2.2 (14.2.2) the first date is the earlier date and date2 was later
 
Prior to Data Services 14.2.2 the date_diff function works as below:
 
date_diff(end_date, start_date)
 
After Data Services 14.2.2 the date_diff function works like this:
 
date_diff(start_date, _end_date)

This may bring SAP Data Services into line with other products but it really needs to be highlighted to customers as it will break any data services job using date_diff in a job after you upgrade to BODI BI 4.2 or SAP version 14.2.2 or higher

See P41 in the attached document from SAP

Tuesday 4 November 2014

SAP Data Services Date_Diff Function

The Data Services date_diff function compares date1 and date2

 Originally date1 was the later date (end date) and date2 was earlier (start date). As of Data Services 4.2.2 (14.2.2) the first date is the earlier date and date2 was later


SAP Data Services Date_Diff Function error problem in BODS 4.2
SAP Data Services Date_Diff Function error problem in BODS 4.2 
 
Prior to Data Services 14.2.2 the date_diff function works as below:
 
date_diff(end_date, start_date)
 
After Data Services 14.2.2 the date_diff function works like this:
 
date_diff(start_date, _end_date)

This may bring SAP Data Services into line with other products but it really needs to be highlighted to customers as it will break any data services job using date_diff in a job after you upgrade to BODI BI 4.2 or SAP version 14.2.2 or higher

See P41 in the attached document from SAP