Monthly Archives: December 2020

Connecting to SQL Server via ODBC using SQL authentication

We recently had a user who had his SQL Server hosted in a data center, and needed to extract files from his database.  He could connect to the instance remotely, but it took too long to extract the files this way.  He tried connecting to the database via another computer in the data center, but received the ‘TCP Provider: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.‘ error.

This suggests a network configuration setting issue.  Instead of getting the data center to change the server settings, we instead set up an ODBC connection and used that connection in SQL Blob Export.

Using Windows authentication to connect to the instance via ODBC was easy enough.  However, if using SQL Server authentication, the password is not stored in the ODBC settings, and the connection would still fail.

In order to connect to the SQL Server instance via ODBC using SQL Server authentication, choose the Connection string option instead.

Click on the Browse button

and select the ODBC connection to your SQL Server database.

The SQL Server ODBC connection manager will then prompt you to enter the password.

Enter the password in the provided area and click OK.  The ODBC connection string is then filled out, together with your password.

Click on the Connect button.  SQL Blob Export should now successfully connect to your SQL Server database using SQL Server authentication.

The same steps apply to our other database products that support SQL Server and ODBC connections.

If you require further assistance, you can post your questions in our support forum.

Searching an existing index in Easy PDF Search

Easy PDF Search indexes your PDF files and allows you to search your files for keywords.  When you perform a search in Easy PDF Search, it first scans your library paths for PDF files.  New and modified files will be indexed, then only existing files are searched.

In some situations, you may not have the source PDF files with you, but only the Easy PDF Search index database.  Or you may not want Easy PDF Search to spend time scanning for existing files, but just want to search for keywords in the already indexed files.

In Easy PDF Search 2.1, we added the option to skip the file scanning process and directly search the existing index.  This is available under the Options menu.

Selecting the Search index only option will search the existing index and return the results, regardless of whether the file exists.

To recap the 4 options:

  • Index new files only
    This option scans the search folders defined in each library, and indexes only the new and modified files it finds, then searches for keywords in those indexed files that exist.
  • index all files
    This option scans the search folders defined in each library and indexes all the files it finds, deleting any existing index for each file.  It then searches for keywords in those indexed files that exist.
  • search only indexed files
    This option scans the search folders defined in each library for files, and searches for keywords in those indexed files.  It ignores any new or modified files.
  • search index only
    This option performs searches on the existing index, and does not scan to check if the indexed files exist.

 

Easy PDF Search – updating the PDF file locations

You may sometimes move your PDF files to another folder, and you don’t want to have to re-index all the files again in Easy PDF Search.

For e.g. you may have one or more libraries that indexes the files in g:\pdflib\.  Let’s say you’ve now moved all the PDF files to a larger drive, say h:\pdfs\.  If you don’t want to have to reindex all the files again, do this.

Select the Tools > Manage library paths item from the main menu.

Easy PDF Search then displays the list of libraries and the paths associated with each library.

As our PDF files have moved from g:\pdflib\ to h:\pdfs\, we need to make the change to our libraries’ paths.

Once you save the new values, DICOM Search will update all the details of the indexed files accordingly, so files previously indexed in g:\pdflib\ will have their source locations updated to h:\pdfs\, if they now exist in h:\pdfs\.  The search path for the libraries will also be updated.

In this way, you do not need to reindex all the files that you have moved.

Moving your Easy PDF Search database

Sometimes you may want to move your Easy PDF Search database to a faster or bigger drive, or to another computer, without having to rebuild the index again.

Moving the database file

Select the File > Settings item from the main menu.

The path value indicates the location where the database file is stored.

In that folder, you should see 3 files.  EPSDataFile.db3  is the main database file.  The other 2 files are support files, and only exist when Easy PDF Search is active.

Enter the new folder where you want to store the database file in.

Once you save the new settings, Easy PDF Search will then copy the database file from the old folder to the new folder.

DICOM Search on Linux

DICOM Search is a Windows application and cannot run natively on Linux or MacOS.  Recently, we had a go at installing and running DICOM Search on Ubuntu 20.04.  We had it installed and running, but there were some issues with using the dark theme, some text were getting cropped, and the overall look was ugly (to put it mildly).

We have since resolved this, and you can now install and run DICOM Search on Ubuntu 20.04.  If you do encounter any issues or GUI abnormalities, please do drop us a line at support @yohz.com.

Here’s DICOM Search running on Ubuntu 20.04 via Wine:

(windows theme)

(dark theme)

We also tested DICOM Search on Elementary OS 5.1 and OpenSUSE 15.2.

(Elementary OS 5.1, dark theme)

(OpenSUSE 15.2, KDE Plasma desktop, dark theme)

If you do encounter any strange behavior when running DICOM Search on your Linux distribution, please do let us know at support@yohz.com.  Thank you.

Now, if only we had a Mac to test on…

Searching for numbers in DICOM text tags

Some DICOM tags store a numerical value along with some textual information.   This makes it difficult to search for a specific value using mathematical operators.

For e.g. the age tag [00101010] in my DICOM images store the patient age together with a prefix (0) and a suffix (Y) i.e.

If we want to search for images where the patient age is between 50 and 60, we would need to write our search query like this:

age IN (‘050Y’, ‘051Y’, ‘052Y’, ‘053Y’, ‘054Y’, ‘055Y’, ‘056Y’, ‘057Y’, ‘058Y’, ‘059Y’, ‘060Y’)

which is very tedious and error-prone.  In DICOM Search 1.2, we added the EXTRACTNUMBER and EXTRACTNUMBERDEF functions to deal with this issue.

EXTRACTNUMBER will extract the first sequence of digits from the tag value and return the number.  If there is no valid digits, the value 0 is returned.  We can then rewrite our search query this way:

EXTRACTNUMBER(age) >= 50 AND EXTRACTNUMBER(age) <= 60

or

EXTRACTNUMBER(age) > 49 AND EXTRACTNUMBER(age) < 61

or

EXTRACTNUMBER(age) IN (50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60)

The EXTRACTNUMBERDEF function accepts a 2nd parameter as the default value to use when no digits exist in the value.  If our search query was written this way:

EXTRACTNUMBERDEF(age, -1) = -1

then any images where the age tag value does not contain numbers will return the value -1, and we can then easily see which of our images does not contain a valid age value.

Redirecting OLE-Object linked files during export

In SQL Image Viewer 10.3, and Access OLE Export/SQL Blob Export 3.18 we added the option to redirect where to look for OLE-Object linked files during the export process.

A common issue when using OLE-Object linked files is that the location of the linked files have changed.  For e.g. you may have previously linked files from the g:\customer_invoices\ folder, but say those files have now been moved to g:\archive\customer_invoices\2018\.

Previous versions of SQL Image Viewer will fail to locate these items during the export process.  In version 10.3, you will now find a redirect button in the Image and File Options screen.

In Access OLE Export/SQL Blob Export, you will find the Redirect button in the Options screen.

Click on that button to bring up the Redirect window.  Here, you can define how the old folders map to the new folders.  For our previous example, we would enter the following:

Now during the export process, when SQL Image Viewer fails to find the files in the original folder, it will look to the redirection rules defined here and look in the new folder for the files.  It will then export the files that it finds.  You can enter multiple redirection entries, and each entry must be on a new line.

Note that the redirection entries are essentially a search/replace process.  Anything entered prior to the redirection symbol (>) is replaced with the value entered after the symbol.  Thus, the entries are not just limited to redirecting entire paths.

Exporting content from Navision Incoming Document Attachment table

In SQL Image Viewer 10.3, we added support for Navision compressed files stored in the Incoming Document Attachment table.

# Note that this applies only to Navision 2013 and newer databases.

When you run a query on the Incoming Document Attachment table, the Content field will display the following if it contains compressed data.

To extract the contents, click on the Export images and files button.

This opens the Export images and files dialog.

Walk through the steps, and SQL Image Viewer will extract and export the files stored in the Content field for you.

Learn more about SQL Image Viewer here, and download a free 14-day trial now and see how SQL Image Viewer can export your Navision compressed content in minutes.