Database Administrators/Technical

RE 7.9 upgrade

Karen H. Hartt — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:31:20 GMT

Has anyone heard of any problems with this upgrade for RE7 not just RE7 enterprise?

Karen

Question on whether to create or enable ENDPOINT on RE7 database?

Rick Baker — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:58:26 GMT

We are running System Center Operating Management that gave us error on SQL database for RE7. I am wondering if you have any information on whether we should configure or enable the SQL Server Service Broker or Database Mirroring endpoint? If so, any known issues related to this? If not, should we enable/configure endpoint? Regards, Rick Baker Data Center Engineer, Gallaudet University

Test DB backup on New Server

Chris Petersen — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:42:43 GMT

I am running The Financial Edge product on a very old server using MSDE. I am worried that it will fail at some very inopportune moment (When else? :-) so I have commandeered a newer desktop machine and installed MS win2K3 server and installed Financial Edge on it. I do not have it connected to the same lan as my live environment. I want to test my backups on this newer machine. The new server doesn't have the same number of hard drives or the same program file locations. I get the following error when I try to use the "Attach Database" option: "An error occurred trying to restore XXXX_XXXX. Device activation error. The phsyical file name "E:\bla bla bla\FE7Database.mdf may be incorrect.......... Use WITH MOVE to identify a valid location for file." It goes on from there but you get the idea. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Chris Petersen

FAW External Link

Lee Turner — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:07:45 GMT

Our faculty are having trouble accessing the FAW from home. I believe we are only providing an internal link and I have been told an external link is needed for complete access.

Can anyone give me advise on setting up an external link to our FAW portal?

Blackbaud Hosted Environment

Jennifer Burrus — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:42:02 GMT

Is anyone in a hosted environment with Blackbaud? We just recently converted and have been having issues and this was the "solution" to my problem. - To chat about it in a forum.....

Any thoughts?

Jennifer Burrus

Business Manager

St. Mark's Cathedral School

New Feedback Poll

David Johnson — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:51:36 GMT

We are interested in how you use the forums. Please take our poll, in Forums Feedback, to let us know.

RE - Large Volume Constituent Adds and Changes

Ann — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:00:53 GMT

I am hoping someone has discovered something I have not yet with regard to constituent maintenance. I will provide a specific scenario, below, and I would love to learn how others would tackle it. This scenario is a specific one, but I have many each month that are very similar.

We have kiosks for visitors to provide their e-mail address and communication content preferences. I am given an Excel file of the entries once a month, and there are currently about 800 of them. From this file, I need to determine if each individual:

a) already exists in RE (add them);
b) is already in RE, and the information they provided is the same as what we have (no change needed); or,
c) is already in RE, but they provided new or different information than what we have (requiring update).

I just have not come up with a way that doesn't require hours and hours of manual effort and would appreciate anyone's input! Thanks very much.

Troubles Abound

Chris Lambert — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:19:26 GMT

I have also posted this under raisers admin section but then thought this may be a better place....

Ok, I dont really know where to begin here. I guess i just need a little reassurance from other admins of raisers. We have about 6 faily active users with a db of about 1.5 gb in size. Its running on a 2003 server using the sql 2005 included with raisers. There is only 2gb of ram in the server.

It seems users are always having multitudes of issues with raisers. Could be sql connection issues... runtime issues... locking during queries... crashing out during queries... not exporting data properly... and on and on. The problem is that most of the issues work when raisers reopens or there is a solution in the knowledge base that fixes the issue. That really might not seem like a problem to some but it really is as when one issue is resolved a new one always replaces it or the issue comes back a day or two later...

My users are beyond frustrated... I have over the last year done multitudes of suggestions from blackbaud to find and fix errors to no avail. Even so far as to building a new server that the only thing it does is serve raiser's. Which in retrospect was probably the right idea from the beginning but i was not the admin here then and have inherited these issues. Now even in the new server I began with having the same issues. Finally i have it set to run all the maintenance options every night and the users mostly make it through the day without errors. The problem now seems to be on days when bigger queries are being run the errors keep coming back before days end.

I am sure there is other info i should be putting here... I am just pulling my hair out, getting a major headache from end user complaints. I just wanna know if there are others out there that have similar issues or headaches with raisers having daily issues or are the people out there that raisers runs fluidly for all the time. And if so would you share your specs and what you do to keep it this way?

Thanking you all in advance... Greatly. I mean you have no idea how grateful i am. :-)

-Chris Lambert

clambert@mcht.org

Database Backend

Peter Davis — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:38:57 GMT

Hi Guys,

I'm pretty new to the RE product itself, but have a strong background in Database Administration, and I was wondering what the easiest way was to gain access to the database backend?

I'm finding the GUI approach to a lot of what I want to achieve quite cumbersome, and think I could feel a bit more comfortable with 'real' data to look at.

Thanks in advance

Wireless card and RE Version 6

Mark McDonough — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:38:15 GMT

We are a cash-strapped non-profit in Detroit still using RE Version 6. We are on a peer-to-peer network. We recently added a Windows XP laptop that has both a built-in network adapter and wireless card. We installed the workstation RE software and found the database without incident. Now when we start Constituent Management, the startup program cycles through the 30 attempts to connect and then fails.

By accident, we discovered that if we remove or disable the wireless card, everything works fine. It appears that RE is trying to get at the database through the wireless card instead of the adapter. Is there some way in either RE or Windows XP to direct the connection be made through the adapter and not the wireless card? Any ideas would be appreciated! Thanks!

Full: Database Administrator Support Roundtable on September 30

Katie Infinger — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:01:05 GMT

Update: The response was great and we've met our capacity for the scheduled meeting, so we are closing registration early. We've already had a few people say that they would be interested in next quarter's roundtable, and we know not everyone had a chance to respond to this initial poll. If you're interested in a next quarter's session, vote on our Future Database Administrator Support Roundtables. When we schedule our next roundtable, you will be the first to find out!

On Wednesday, September 30 from 2:00p.m. until 3:30 p.m. ET, we are having our quarterly Blackbaud Database Administrator Support Roundtable.

David Johnson, our Technical Support Lead, will discuss the basic Blackbaud Database Administrator tasks for our version 7 products: The Raiser's Edge, The Financial Edge, The Education Edge, Blackbaud Student Information System, and The Patron Edge. The roundtable is broken into sections with a question-and-answer period in between. The sections cover:

Backing up and recovering your database
Installing and updating your systems
Maintaining your database
Basic troubleshooting

[Poll]

Future Database Administrator Support Roundtables

Katie Infinger — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:49:35 GMT

Yesterday, we posted a poll to gauge your interest in our quarterly Database Administrator Support Roundtable

If you missed the description, here it is: David Johnson, our Technical Support Lead, will discuss the basic Blackbaud Database Administrator tasks for our version 7 products: The Raiser's Edge, The Financial Edge, The Education Edge, Blackbaud Student Information System, and The Patron Edge. The roundtable is broken into sections with a question-and-answer period in between. The sections cover:

Backing up and recovering your database
Installing and updating your systems
Maintaining your database
Basic troubleshooting

If your databases are hosted by Blackbaud OnDemand, these tasks are covered for you, but feel free to join the roundtable!

[Poll]

Raiser's Edge and Datatel Colleague

Ben Schools — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:19:20 GMT

Is there any one out there that is using RE for fundrasing data and Colleague for Registrar's office, and would like to share how you are integrating the two? Please respond here or you can email me at: schoolsb@emmanuel.edu.

Thanks,

Ben

Disabling animated splash when starting FE

David Frederick — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:18:03 GMT

In older versions of The Financial Edge, we used to be able to pass a switch, -nofx, to FE7Shell.exe and that switch would disable the animation that occurs on the splash window when logging on to FE. Unfortunately, this has stopped working in more recent versions. For remote users logging on to FE via one of our terminal servers, this increases the time it takes to start FE significantly.

Does anyone know of a way to display a splash screen without animation when starting FE? I've searched the knowledge base, and haven't been able to find an answer. Thank you.

Future Database Administrator Q & A Sessions

Katie Infinger — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:55:49 GMT

A few days ago, we posted a poll to gauge your interest in our upcoming Q&A session "What Every Blackbaud Database Administrator Ought to Know."

If you missed the description, here it is:
Our Technical Support Lead, David Johnson, will begin with a brief presentation which covers basics like installing, updating, backing up, recovering, and maintaining your database and troubleshooting technical issues. Then it's time for your questions and ideas!

[Poll]

Donor Filing System

Karen Snyder — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:29:14 GMT

We are a social service agency and our donor files, of course, contain private information which includes credit card information. Our third floor office is in a private building which is accessed through a controlled lobby. The donor filing system is in a door-less room in the rear portion of our floor. The filing cabinets are not locked.

Do other organizations lock their donor files? What level of security do you provide for your donor files? Thanks for your input. Karen

SQL Server 2005 Replication and RE 7

Scott Crow — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:00:07 GMT

I am beginning to explore database replication adn RE 7. We are building redundency itno our server farm with another co - location. Our client apps run in a citirx enviroment that points to one RE server now. I've already found the KB article that says replication isn't supported by BB. I'm sure some of the larger RE and FE systems are usign database replication. I was wondering how freaked our RE gets with replication and what steps are necessary in the event of a failover. if you're using SQL Server replication or something like WANSync.

Any ideas about the good - bad and ugly is helpful.

Thanks,

Scott

Printer that will work with citrix and a Mac.

Mario Gonzales — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:43:44 GMT

Hi,

Has anyone had experience with getting Citrix from a hosted environment to work well with an HP printer? or perhaps a recommended printer that is known to work without a gamble, any printer suggestions are welcome.

Mario

Papersave issues in Citrix

Matt Miller — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 13:36:42 GMT

We recently installed Papersave into out very stable FE environment, and we are now experiencing major problems. I am hoping someone else out there has had the same issues (well, actually, I am hoping if you had them, you also solved them :)

We run FE 7.78 on Citrix 4.5 RP3 on Windows 2003. We operate in both seamless window, and published desktops. Errors occur in both cases.

We have a dedicated SQL server just for accounting systems, including papersave (FE, Advanced Budgeting, Papersave)

When using FE and papersave, we routinely get errors in the PS_FE_HI_Listener.exe program while scanning documents. Papersave thinks this may be a TWAIN issue in citrix, but is unsure. We use the recommended Xerox 152 scanners. Whenever we open any program to test access to the scanner in citrix, evertyhing works fine. Papersave will acquire a handful of images, and fail. Some days, no errors at all, others every other document. If it is a citrix issues, the only thing I can think of would possibly the servers get the scanners mixed up between sessions (all of 3 scanners in use). We run two servers for our accounting department, and both servers produce the errors.

Any insight or advise on where to begin looking will be greatly appriciated. I'm stumped, papersave, while being responsive and curtious hasn't provided much help, and accounting is getting frustrated.

Matt

Direct Debit Software supplier - Microgen??

Jay Hunt — Wed, 30 May 2007 10:22:03 GMT

Hi, We are new users to Raisers Edge and are wondering if anyone is currently using Microgen/Bacway IP to do their Direct Debit run? We need to know if RE is compatible with Microgen?

Office 2007 problems with RE

Vicki Young — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:41:56 GMT

Anyone else having significant issues with 2007?? It is causing many problems, including wrong data in mail merges. BB has had us jump thru several hoops and we're still unable to produce letters (reverted some workstations back to 2003 in order to do so), and mostly cannot even have Word open when trying to do things in RE.

Outlook/Dashboard problem is solved/inconsequential.

BB doesn't seem to know what to do, so I'm a bit up a creek also, even after spending weeks of time on this.

Communication Link Failures in GrantedGE, Raiser's Edge and Financial Edge

Rachel Adkins — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:15:33 GMT

We have recently started receiving the following error message in GrantedGE, Raiser's Edge and Financial Edge:

General ODBC Error: [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Communication link failure

Native error: 0

We did not notice these errors until after installing Kaskpersky Anti-Virus. After we shut down and restart the program it is okay for a while, but locks up again. Also, when one person in the office locks up, everyone then does.

Has anyone else experienced this issue? Any suggestions?

Thanks!

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Moving SQL Server to new box

Chris Lambert — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:15:32 GMT

Does anyone know if there is a way to move Raisers to a new server. Will i have to visit each machine and reinstall or can i just detach the databse from one server and attach it on the new one and everyone will find it.

Sql 2000 to Sql 2005 Upgrade - Raiser's Edge 7

Shan Dawson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:12:11 GMT

Hi, at the moment we are looking to upgrade our Sql 2000 to Sql 2005. We are looking at 2 options for the upgrade. The first is to detach the database via the BMC, then install a new copy of sql 2005 and the re-attach the database.

The other is to detach the database via the BMC and then upgrade the sql 2000 to sql 2005 then re-attach the database.

These are basically the methods suggested by Blackbaud for upgrading sql 2000 to sql 2008 but we are using sql 2005 at the moment.

Are these the way Blackbaud would suggest to upgrade sql 2000 to sql 2005. If so, which way would you recommend?

SQL 2000 to SQL 2008 Upgrade for Raisers Edge 7 - Required? Method?

Tony Finch — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:03:56 GMT

We received a notice of Raiser's Edge Microsoft SQL Server 2000 END OF SUPPORT. DO we need to upgrade to SQL 2008 or can we continue to run with 2000 if we are not having issues? If we do have to upgrade, what is the preferred method? Is their an upgrade procedure specificly for SQL with Raiser's Edge 7?