Ever needed to-do this in SQL? select * from ATABLE where [SomeDate]=@A_DATE_YOU_WANT_TO_LOOKFO Now suppose that you want to ignore times as SQL Server's DateTime object stores the time along with the date. You can modify the query to-do just this. select * from ATABLE CAST(FLOOR(CAST( [SomeDate] AS float)) AS datetime) = @A_DATE_YOU_WANT_TO_LOOKFO Obviously the variable @A_DATE_YOU_WANT_TO_LOOKFO should have its time set to midnight, but this works great...
Working at a bank, I get to play with an iSeries a lot. I've been trying to build a data warehouse that uses day old data from the iseries and importing the data into a MS SQL database. I was able to do a data import using SSIS but I started to think about about how to do this in code. It was pretty easy! First getting the data out of the iSeries/AS400. You have to install the latest IBM data provider. You get this when you install IBM's programmers toolkit. After you install the toolkit, add the...
In a previous post, I discussed how to identify the technologies you want to learn and come up with a personal learning road map, so to speak. But when it comes time to dive into one specific technology, how do you go about learning something new? In fact, I almost always ask that question during developer interviews. The most disappointing answer I get to that question is, "well, I will Google it and read articles about it." That doesn't really show a very deep level of enthusiasm or commitment....
How do you stay up on new technologies? How do you approach learning a specific new technology? The first thing you have to accept is that the Microsoft technology stack has gotten so vast that it is simply impossible for a single person to be an expert in everything. This is the most important aspect to remember. This post is simply to describe my personal approach for staying up on new technologies in the hopes that other people will find something valuable in this to add to their toolbox. In terms...
With the recent down turn in the economy, companies are starting to layoff workers to save a few bucks. Which drives home the point for me that it does not matter who you work for or what you do, being let go is always a possibility. As software developers, we should never stop improving and learning. While that may not prevent you from getting axed, even if that happens, you will leave as a better developer and take away with you all the experiences that you've learned, and should land on your feet...
At times you may need to update your objects and add additional properties, and maybe you still have old clients that consume your objects, so you will need to update your objects in a way that makes it backwards compatible. That's where Version Tolerant Serialization comes in. Let's say you have an object with one property. You add a second property called "MyProperty2", and the change needs to be version tolerant. You can implement ISerializable and do this: public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo...
Can't wait to play around with the new Visual Studio 2010. There are some cool stuff coming, including a concurrency troubleshooting tool called CHESS. Many a times, I've felt like I was at the edge of insanity trying to track down a concurrency bug. This tool may come in handy. From Microsoft: CHESS: CHESS is a tool for finding and reproducing Heisenbugs in concurrent programs. CHESS attaches to a concurrent program and takes complete control over the thread scheduling. This allows CHESS to drive...
So because of an oversight on my part using LiveWriter, Part 1 is being posted after Part 2. To recap, over at Aarron Erickson’s blog he got quite the response to his post about the marketing failure of XP and specifically Paired Programming (PP). Aaron, in his post, jokingly (although much truth is said in jest) talks about how PP will prevent developers from doing things like surfing the web or getting bothered by others, but he makes valid points that there are tremendous benefits to an organization...
We continue our discussion of comments left over at Aaron Erickson’s blog in response to his post about the marketing failure of XP and specifically Paired Programming (PP). To recap: Aaron, in his post, jokingly (although much truth is said in jest) talks about how PP will prevent developers from doing things like surfing the web or getting bothered by others, but he makes valid points that there are tremendous benefits to an organization that implements PP. The point of the entire post was making...
Last weekend I spoke at Iowa Code Camp in Des Moines Iowa. It was a fantastic time, those guys put on a great event. After a quick dinner and iced tea (no post-event beer for those driving home!) at the after party, I headed out on my four hour drive back to the Twin Cities. The weather and road conditions were good. Until just south of Clear Lake. Suddenly the highway became one big ice sheet and cars were going into the ditch right and left. People were spinning out even when we were crawling along...
Many of those who know me (probably my only blog readers) know that I started a new job at the beginning of the year. At that time, I started working from home full-time, with the occasional trip to the client site. Working from home had many positives and a few negatives. On the positive side, I saved a lot on gas, I have been able to spend a lot more time with my family, and I've been able to take care of things at the house that I would normally have to take time off for. At times, my focus was...
So today I finally got around to updating my template libraries to cope with different screen DPI's (dot's per inch). As you all know Windows Mobile has different DPI's based on the resolution of the screen. I've been using 320x240 size devices for much of what I do, however 640x480 (i.e VGA) is now becoming more and common. To make forms look nice any bitmap that you drop onto them needs to look good at 96, 196 DPI to cope with this two resolutions. Of course we other screen resolutions we have...
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt;...
Yesterday at the 2008 PASS conference they announced the winners of the SQL Heroes contest and I am proud to announce that BIDSHelper won first place with a perfect score of 55 out of 55. And extra congratulations go to BIDSHelper team member John Welch who also had one of his other projects - ssisUnit come in equal second. Thanks to everyone who voted for BIDSHelper...
I have been writing blogs over here for almost two months now! And so far I have 49 comments :-) That's quite a good response! I am happy that I am managing to help and be of information to a good number of you! Happy week-end! Regards, Stephanie Grima...
Introduction | Why? | What? | How? | Part 2 Introduction This post was brought about when I moved a development system onto the hardware it will run on in production. The processor is a quad core but even when I had a query with a duration of 30s only one core was running hot, the others were standing on the side line laughing at me. It turns out that to use all your cores you need to be a bit careful about how you write your query. This post and the others in the series are about the discoveries...
SharePoint has an out of the box, collect feedback Workflow. Although that could be used most of the time, there is an option to create your own feedback workflow through wizards. These are the steps one should follow: Go to your document library you wish to use the customized feedback workflow Click on Settings Choose Document Library Settings Then click on Workflow Settings under Permissions and Management Section Click Add a workflow Choose from the wizard according to what are you after. Below...
I'm frustrated...No matter which jobs I take I seem to end up working on UI with ASP.Net Webforms. I don't like UI and I really don't like webforms. The model feels broken to me. I don't know whether I'm missing something fundamental in my understanding of the webforms paradigm or it really is broken. I seem to spend a lot of time fighting with the framework. You know when you design something really well and it's just 'nice' to use and then you design something badly and its hard to use? You end...
The Condition: If title field contains keywords How is it used? When adding this condition to a workflow, the workflow checks if a specific field is in the specific library / list. If it is, the condition is true and thus, the actions are then implemented. Example:...
Goal Ensure your developers build code to meet the spec (the contract of customer requirements) in a timely manner Ensure your developers build code changes that don’t break the spec and that pass functional requirements Ensure your developers build code which is robust (not fragile) and that meets design and code quality guidelines The Spec Make sure that the technical analyst provides appropriate specs! Keep it deliverable – compile-able. No point building mounds of UML diagrams that don’t stay...
Note: This was originally chapter 13 of my book, UML Applied: A .NET Perspective from Apress. My editor and my tech reviewer read it; and both said, "We like it; but what does it have to do with UML?" So I came up with a more on-topic closing chapter. But I still like it. It sums up my view of the software development profession quite nicely. So I thought I would share it here. Somewhere, deep in our prehistory... A man tells a story, a story of a hunt. Perhaps it's a hunt he's planning. Or perhaps...
Just received an e-mail that as of Nov 23, 2008 (below), Microsoft will no longer be marketing Windows Live OneCare. It’s unknown what that means, other than them closing the affiliate program (where marketers get paid if you install it). It is unreasonable that they will discontinue the product, since they have just launched Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Live OneCare Server. I’m wondering if the marketing department that was contracted, was fired. Windows Live OneCare to Close November...
Spent all day on other projects. Look for the first Ulterior Motive Lounge case study starting Monday...
I love it when someone else writes up my blog postings for me! Microsoft BizSpark is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups. By joining BizSpark, Startups get: o Software: fast and easy access to Microsoft’s current full-featured development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions with no upfront costs and minimal requirements. Startups...
DAWG stands for Directed Acrylic Word Graph and in addition to having a cool name they are pretty useful. DAWGs are used for quickly determining whether or not a particular word is in a set of words. In short: very fast set inclusion. An additional side effect is that DAWGs use less memory that a straight dictionary list. There is also a variant of the DAWG called a compact DAWG that further reduces the memory footprint of the structure. What are the uses of a DAWG? The first thing that comes to...
Every Windows CE device has a file named CEConfig.h in the \Windows folder. This file can be used to conditionally compile code against different projects or SDKs. It can also be used to determine the license level of a Windows CE OS. CEConfig.h is created when a Windows CE OS project is built, or more specifically sysgened, using Platform Builder. CEConfig.h contains macro definitions for the OS components included in the project. In other words, it can tell the C code about the features that will...
In this issue: Jeff Wolfer, Matt Watson, and Jesse Liberty. From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Attached/Dependency Properties code snippet update Jeff Wolfer has replacement code snippets for a couple of the ones in VS2008... propdp and propa are continuing to use UIPropertyMetadata, and I just checked on my laptop and there it was... Jeff's replacement fixes that... Silverlight Validator and Input Toolkit Matt Watson and Jeff Wolfer have a toolkit out on CodePlex for Input and validation......
Ever been to a conference? Any conference. If not, you really need to attend one to see what it's all about. DevTeach in Canada is a perfect sized one to attend. It's not so big you get lost in the crowds yet it's big enough to have big-name speakers and top-notch sessions. Sometimes, you want to go but you just can't convince your boss to foot the bill or let you out of work. Jean-René Roy has put together a great page to help with that. Top ten ways to convince your boss that you need to go to...
Here's some great info on Microsoft’s patents and patent applications in the area of Cloud Computing. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/result.html?p=1&edit_alert=&srch=xprtsrch&query_txt=AN%2Fmicrosoft+AND+cloud+AND+search&uspat=on&usapp=on&date_range=last20&stemming=on&sort=chron&search=Search. It is not necessary to read an entire patent to understand the main concepts. Instead, you can read the ABSTRACTS, which appear at the top of each document. These patents...
I was recently following along in a quick tutorial in Microsoft ASP.NET Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Version 2003 Step By Step by G. Andrew Duthie, when low and behold I came across a fundamental tutorial about ASP.NET authentication that just didn't work. The culprit? authorization forms credentials has a default of SHA1, not Clear that the book assumed. I checked through the MSDN entries to make sure this still applied in 3.5, even though the book was written for ASP.NET 1.1 (which...
Something we (Matt and I)have been working on for the past few days has been trying to be able to validate input forms in Silverlight. Seeing as how there wasn't a fairly straightforward framework...we decided to build our own! So, without further delay... Here it is, version 1: Silverlight.Validator...
I noticed while working with Attached Properties and Dependency Properties that the code snippet is wrong. It keeps on trying using the UIPropertyMetadata. My guess is that this is an older version of the Register methods. So, here is a link (to my skydrive) that you can download and update your code snippets: http://cid-af5c4f2a863b6b78.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public. Just download the two snippets and place them in your "%Program Files%\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC#\Snippets\1033\NetFX30"...
If you haven't seen Google analytics before, you ought to know this: it rocks. You'll get great reports on everything from geographic location to browser to flash version (Why no Silverlight version, eh Google?) See example awesomeness here: Obviously I've only recently set this up. However, since it is up and running and working great, I figured I'd show you how to get yours up and running as well. Firstly, sign up for Google Analytics. Then afterwards, Google will provide a script to monitor the...
I started to comment on my friend John’s blog and decided that my comment was too long and what John really did was “tag” me (see this blog post for a good example of tagging someone else (Meme Time: Growing Up Geek)) so here goes, my storage addiction for the world to see: 3TB in my Windows Home Server (2.73 usable) 500GB Seagate (came with HP EX470) 750GB Samsung 750GB Seagate 1TB Hitachi Drive 150GB in my desktop machine – it is a Western Digital Raptor, 10000 RPM drive. I wanted speed not size....
My good friend Martín Uresti sent to me a newer and more detailed version of the Mexico Map in XAML so we can use it in Entrenamiento intensivo de Silverlight en Español / WPF applications! At a first glance it looks amazingly detailed and more beautiful than the first one. Thank you Martín for your cooperation with the Entrenamiento intensivo de Silverlight en Español community! Just as in the first version each state is surrounded by a <Canvas> element so we can develop against each state...
In WPF/Silverlight world it's very simple to make transparent controls and put anything inside anything. However, that's not the situation in WinForms, and even worth in the world of compact devices with CF. Within this worlds, there is only one way to make controls transparent - to use color masks. Today, we'll create transparent controls with Compact Framework and put it into panel, which has image background. So let's start. First of all, we need create our own control. For this purpose, we have...
I got hit with an interesting and troubling problem at work today. I won't go into specifics, other than to say it was an ASP.NET problem I hadn't encountered before and I was stuck. So I thought about it and pinged one of my twitter friends who happened to be an ASP.NET guru (and insider) and she thought about it for all of about 4 seconds and said, oh yeah... I hate that, here's a link. And wouldn't you know it, the link was to a blog right here on GeeksWithBlogs.NET. The blog entry totally solved...
"Can I get a CustomerService with that?" "No." Why do we always gravitate towards the data centric services? I honestly believe its because its just easier to do. Data is always defined, whether its in DDL (CREATE TABLE ( Name char(4));) or in C# (private string _name;) we have solid ways to define data. These names and definitions make it easier for me to work with it. On top of this, it seems to me that the English language is good at describing nouns (really?), but for some reason when it comes...
One of the questions that has come up several times during my presentation on using the Windows Mobile State & Notification Broker to build call blocking applications or SMS Interception applications was to find out what effect multiple apps monitoring for the same state change event would have. I had suspected all along that each app would be able to handle it just fine since in essence the OS on the phone is also monitoring for that state change to accomplish the built in functionality at the...
In this issue: Joseph Ghassan, Jeff Wilcox, Peter McGrattan, Kathy Kam, and Lee. From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 2 User Controls Communication Joseph Ghassan has a very complete tutorial up on communication between user controls. Managed Html Controls source code Jeff Wilcox reports that the managed wrapper used for client-side HTML controls used in the Unit Test Framework were actually delivered with the Silverlight Unit Test framework's source! Silverlight 2 WCF Polling Duplex Support -...
The newest version of Google Sync adds a great new feature of syncing contacts. Now your Gmail contacts will stay up to date with your Blackberry contacts and vice versa. Very nice! Download page here. Technorati Tags: Google Sync,Blackberry...
Well after agreeing to take over managing my local user group I've managed to have 2 meetings in the past couple of months and interest seems to be building back up. On Wednesday it was my turn to present on some of the new T-SQL features found in SQL Server 2008. It felt good to be up front and presenting again as it has been a while for me. I was a bit rushed for time since I was the second of two presenters but that was fine with me. I simply cut out some demos. I know I made some mental notes...
I'm writing this post for two reasons: 1) To preserve the details of the steps I took to get this all working, and also 2) To help others who might be looking to do the same thing. While I'm not a complete Linux noob, some simple things still are not clear to me, and in other cases, there is conflicting information available on getting DD-WRT running with USB and Samba, so I'm clarifying here what worked for me. Background I've had a Windows server running over the years for various reasons. As of...
Will Strohl did a great job hosting the Orlando DotNetNuke User Group meeting last night at ABC Fine Wines & Spirits Office in Orlando, FL. I left early for the meeting because I had no clue how long it would take to get across town during rush hour. I managed to get lost and called Will for help. I hate getting lost! In any event, it was a great meeting. David Bayer who is a search engine guru spoke about how he was using DotNetNuke with his clients.He spoke about innovative uses of the DNN...
This script generates the “CREATE INDEX” scripts for a SQL Server database: set nocount on declare @index table ( object_id int, objectName sysname, index_id int, indexName sysname, fill_factor tinyint, allow_row_locks bit, allow_page_locks bit, is_padded bit, indexText varchar(max), indexTextEnd varchar(max) ) declare @indexColumn table ( object_id int, index_id int, column_id int, index_column_id int, max_index_column_id int, is_descending_key bit, is_included_column bit, columnName varchar(255),...
I started testing a BizTalk application today which calls a 3rd party service, passing a couple of datetime parameters, to retrieve a dataset which is then persisted to a SQL Server database. This application had been running well in production for a while but enhancements were required to make use of web methods recently made available by the 3rd party. After making the changes I tested the BTS application on my dev box, calling a stubbed web service installed locally. I then deployed the BizTalk...
Virtual TechDays is back and this time, I would be covering topics around ASP.NET AJAX Improvements in .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1, Internet Explorer 8 for Web Developers and .NET Application Development. If you want to have a quick preview of what I am talking on, you can check my previous posts However, there are a few more enhancements that help AJAX driven web developement and if you are an ASP.NET / AJAX Developer you really dont want to miss the sessions. The ASP.NET and IE 8 Sessions are on Day...
So you may notice this post is a little late. The course moved to an open format today and the last people left for the night at 4:30 AM. That's 9 AM to 4:30 AM. Basically today we got direction from JP and then formed groups that we worked with all day to implement an end to end solution from the point that we were already at. One of the things you will push yourself for today is understanding fluent interfaces to whatever extent that you can. The other part is how to build them. They are much harder...