Disk space may be cheap but it is still not free! And, while SQL Server 2008 supports online compression of backups, it is only available in the Enterprise edition. So I wrote a simple powershell script (more like a snippet) to compress any backup (.bak and .trn files) older than 2 days.


cd E:\MSSQL\BACKUP\SalesLogix
dir *.trn,*.bak | where { $_.CreationTime.CompareTo([DateTime]::Now.AddDays(-2)) -lt 0 } |% `
{ & 'C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe' a "$_.zip" $_; rm $_ }


Could replace “.zip” with “.7z” to do a 7-zip compression – it will take a bit less disk space but more cpu. Could also be tweaked a bit to support recursion.

I saved that to E:\MSSQL\Backup\ZipBackups.ps1 and created a schedule task to invoke “powershell E:\MSSQL\Backup\ZipBackups.ps1″. This requires the execution policy to be set on powershell, to allow unsigned local scripts:


set-executionpolicy RemoteSigned


I am still working on getting more familiar with powershell as it can be a nifty tool (and is becoming more and more standard on Windows servers as it is bundled with other packages)

A quick offering to the great Google god, in case you are running into the same issue:

• “NullReferenceException” in the “ExtractValuesFromCell” method – this is caused by the “pseudo” cell added by the SlxGridView. To work around, turn off the “ExpandableRows” flag.
• Blank page with a NullReferenceException in the LookupControl ClientConfiguration.From method: check the provider listed in connection.config. It needs to be spelled “SLXOLEDB”. If it is spelled out “SalesLogix OLEDB Connection Provider”, it will fail (not sure why but on 7.5.2 sometimes the connection is output in that format – I think, because I created the connection in AA, instead of logging into the Admin first)
• Web client crashes when grid.Sort is called – do not call that method from the Sorting handler because it will cause infinite recursion (the Sorting handler can often be empty)
• AA gives ArgumentNullException when Update Properties is clicked: this is an installation problem. Run a repair. In fact, if you get random errors from AA, and they are not specific to one project, running a repair should probably be the first corrective action.

Another (thankfully smaller) post on the SalesLogix journal, detailing how to use straight SQL in a web grid. I use that a lot when I have a complex, read-only query (so much faster than cranking out the corresponding C# code to do it through the entity model), and I know a lot of SalesLogix dev are very familiar with SQL, so figured it would be useful.

The article is at Back to Basics – Using Direct SQL in Web Grids