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• SQLAuthority News – Statistics and Best Practices – Virtual Tech Days – Nov 22, 2010

  - by pinaldave

  I am honored that I have been invited to speak at Virtual TechDays on Nov 22, 2010 by Microsoft. I will be speaking on my favorite subject of Statistics and Best Practices. This exclusive online event will have 80 deep technical sessions across 3 days – and, attendance is completely FREE. There are dedicated tracks for Architects, Software Developers/Project Managers, Infrastructure Managers/Professionals and Enterprise Developers. So, REGISTER for this exclusive online event TODAY. Statistics and Best Practices Timing: 11:45am-12:45pm Statistics are a key part of getting solid performance. In this session we will go over the basics of the statistics and various best practices related to Statistics. We will go over various frequently asked questions like a) when to update statistics, b) different between sync and async update of statistics c) best method to update statistics d) optimal interval of updating statistics. We will also discuss the pros and cons of the statistics update. This session is for all of you – whether you’re a DBA or developer! You can register for this event over here. If you have never attended my session on this subject I strongly suggest that you attend the event as this is going to be very interesting conversation between us. If you have attended this session earlier, this will contain few new information which will for sure interesting to share with all. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: MVP, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Joins, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQL Statistics, Statistics

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• SQL SERVER – sp_describe_first_result_set New System Stored Procedure in SQL Server 2012

  - by pinaldave

  I might have said this earlier many times but I will say it again – SQL Server never stops to amaze me. Here is the example of it sp_describe_first_result_set. I stumbled upon it when I was looking for something else on BOL. This new system stored procedure did attract me to experiment with it. This SP does exactly what its names suggests – describes the first result set. Let us see very simple example of the same. Please note that this will work on only SQL Server 2012. EXEC sp_describe_first_result_set N'SELECT * FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.SalesOrderDetail', NULL, 1 GO Here is the partial resultset. Now let us take this simple example to next level and learn one more interesting detail about this function. First I will be creating a view and then we will use the same procedure over the view. USE AdventureWorks GO CREATE VIEW dbo.MyView AS SELECT [SalesOrderID] soi_v ,[SalesOrderDetailID] sodi_v ,[CarrierTrackingNumber] stn_v FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] GO Now let us execute above stored procedure with various options. You can notice I am changing the very last parameter which I am passing to the stored procedure.This option is known as for browse_information_mode. EXEC sp_describe_first_result_set N'SELECT soi_v soi, sodi_v sodi, stn_v stn FROM MyView', NULL, 0; GO EXEC sp_describe_first_result_set N'SELECT soi_v soi, sodi_v sodi, stn_v stn FROM MyView', NULL, 1; GO EXEC sp_describe_first_result_set N'SELECT soi_v soi, sodi_v sodi, stn_v stn FROM MyView', NULL, 2; GO Here is result of all the three queries together in single image for easier understanding regarding their difference. You can see that when BrowseMode is set to 1 the resultset describes the details of the original source database, schema as well source table. When BrowseMode is set to 2 the resulset describes the details of the view as the source database. I found it really really interesting that there exists system stored procedure which now describes the resultset of the output. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Stored Procedure, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• What's your experience with female programmers?

  - by Rachel

  Let me start by saying I'm female, but every single other female programmer I've known has been pretty terrible. The extent of their knowledge seems to be copy/paste and modify some values. Quite often they don't even try to learn new concepts, or understand what they're doing. I'm not saying good female programmers aren't out there, just that the ratio of good/bad programmers seems much worse then males. Perhaps its because everyone feels they have to give female programmers a chance to prove they are not biased? Or is this just me?? What has your experiences been with them? UPDATE: Just want to say thanks for all the responses. I've learned some interesting things and am happy to know that female programmers have such support :) My experience has been very limited with them but all bad, and I agree that it is probably due to my small sample size (around 5). I wasn't trying to be sexist with such a question, I just wanted to find out if it was really that abnormal to be a female programmer. I'm abnormal about a lot of things you'd expect from a female... I play video games in most of my spare time, I liked Math so much I completed my entire math book during christmas break one year (What can I say, I found the subject interesting), I'm not very social, I dislike shopping, I only have 2 pairs of shoes, my significant other doesn't work but does all the housework/laundry/etc... but anyways, thanks :)

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• SQL SERVER – 2 T-SQL Puzzles and Win USD 50 worth Amazon Gift Card and 25 Other Prizes

  - by pinaldave

  We all love brain teasers and interesting puzzles. Today I decided to come up with 2 interesting puzzles and winner of the contest will get USD 50 worth Amazon Gift Card. The puzzles are sponsored by NuoDB. Additionally, The first 25 individuals who download NuoDB Beta 8 by midnight Friday, Sept. 21 (EST) will automatically receive a $10 Amazon gift card. Puzzle 1: Why following code when executed in SSMS displays result as a * (Star)? SELECT CAST(634 AS VARCHAR(2)) Puzzle 2: Write the shortest code that produces results as 1 without using any numbers in the select statement. Bonus Q: How many different Operating System (OS) NuoDB support? Click here HINT If you can solve above puzzles you will be eligible for winning USD 50 Amazon Gift Card. However, you can always enroll yourself for following Bonus Prizes where if you have good chance of winning USD 10 Amazon Gift Card (if you are first 25 individual in specific time). Bonus Prizes: The first 25 individuals who download NuoDB Beta 8 by midnight Friday, Sept. 21 (EST) will automatically receive a $10 Amazon gift card. Rules: Please leave an answer in the comments section below. You can resubmit your answer multiple times, the latest entry will be considered valid. The winner will be announced on 1st October. Last day to participate in the puzzle is September 28th, 2012. All valid answer will be kept hidden till September 28th, 2012. Only One Winner will get USD 50 worth Amazon Gift Card. The first 25 individuals who download NuoDB Beta 8 by midnight Friday, Sept. 21 (EST) will automatically receive a $10 Amazon gift card. The winner will be selected using random algorithm. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

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• An end to the static &hellip;

  - by Dave Oliver

  Last October I learnt my company wanted to put together a new blog/social networking policy. I decided that out of respect for my employer I wouldn’t blog until this was sorted out. This was perhaps was an easy decision to make as I was separating from my ex-wife at the time and frankly needed the time to concentrate on other things. So now the company has a brand new policy and I’m back into the dating game I thought I would blow off the cobwebs and get back to what I enjoy doing. First and foremost SQL Server 2008 R2 is almost here and to mark that fact I will be in London on Thursday at the Microsoft UK Tech-Day’s event. The subjects I most want to see are … Power Pivot – this is such an exciting technology! I’ve been a fan of Qlikview for years so it will be good to see how it compares SQL Azure – Cloud Computing is big right now, so it will be interesting to see what the RTM product can do. I have afew ideas for its use and will be interesting to see if SQL Azure is the right product … more on this in the next few weeks. Master Data Services – This is one of those technologies that Microsoft hasn’t been making much noise about … and frankly should have because it is a game changer. Hmmm, queue future “What is … ?” post StreamInsight – An exciting events technology, again another “What is … ?” post is around the corner on that. So, you thought that SQL Server 2008 R2 was just a release to make sure the years between SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2010 weren’t so long? I am however disappointed that Clustering across Subnets didn’t make it and not sure if Control Points made it but all will be revealed later on this week. Till then I will have to wait! Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Techdays,SQL Server 2008 R2

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• Umbraco Gold Partner going from strength to strength.

  - by Vizioz Limited

  It is amazing how time flies when you are having fun and we certainly have been having an interesting year at Vizioz, I thought it was about time I wrote another blog post and shared some of our news.Over the last 6 months we have:a) Had the pleasure of working with some great clients from the USA, Ireland and the UKb) Built some interesting and complex sites for Multi-national brands (under NDA's, you'd be impressed if you knew!)c) Converted the Umbraco Users Manual to a free iBook for all those iPad owning Umbraco users.d) We have hired three new employees (Sam, Pearl & Zaara)e) We have given our notice on our current office (see below)And on the horizon:a) We have submitted Allen for Umbraco to the Apple App store for approval (hopefully this will be available very soon!)b) We are about to sign a new office lease for a new office that is twice the size of our current office, so we will have room for a meeting room, a chill out room and some more employees!So it's exciting times at Vizioz, thank you to all our fantastic clients for making this possible, we look forward to working with you all over the years to come.One thing we don't shout about as much as we probably should, we also renewed our Umbraco Gold Partner status for the second year, showing our commitment to the Umbraco CMS, if you are looking for a great Umbraco partner with experienced developers to build your new site, or to take over the on-going maintenance of an existing site, then pick up the phone and give us a call, we would love to add you to our list of happy customers!

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• The 'desktops' move to Oracle

  - by [email protected]

  The move to Oracle has been most interesting.  Here we have an organization who are interested in what they are interested in.  Not so much in things that aren't 'core'. The legacy Sun desktop products are things that Oracle is interested in.  To that end there are some changes coming to policies and products - and from my perspective they are all good. Very good. One of the changes to the Product suite is that we are now referred to as part of the Virtualization team, falling under Oracle's Chief Corporate Archtiect, Edward Screven.  Edward says that the Products were a 'gem' found inside the great pile of stuff that was Sun. Another change is that while StarOffice/Open Office has been certainly endorsed by Oracle, and it also falls under Edward's purview, and here has been a push on to use it as opposed to... well... you know.    It is not, however, part of the Virtualization team's product suite any more. There are some other really interesting changes coming that you will hear about quite soon.  The big message for today, though, is that Sun Rays, Secure Global Desktop, VirtualBox, and Oracle VDI software are all still alive and kicking and moving forward.  Infact, at the Oracle earnings call last week, Charles Phillips announced more significant wins with Sun Rays in the US Federal Governmnet space.  He could have talked about all kinds of legacy Sun products, but chose to mention Sun Rays in the first Quarterly statement since the acquisition of Sun - you should see this as a very good sign indeed. More soon - until then...

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• Nice take on Open Source

  - by EmbeddedInsider

  I just revisited the “Micro Framework”- Microsoft’s bootable runtime, essentially an OS that allows managed code to run on small 32bit CPUs, even without Memory Management.  Things are happening http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/bb267253.aspx Abstract The Microsoft .NET Micro Framework is a bootable runtime module that brings the advantages of .NET programming to devices too resource-constrained to run other Microsoft embedded platforms. The benefits of developing with the .NET Micro Framework include the C# programming language, a managed execution environment, a substantial subset of the .NET libraries, and Visual Studio™ deployment and debugging. In this white paper we explain why the .NET Micro Framework is an ideal choice for embedded development and provide technical details of the platform’s Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) and Common Language Runtime (CLR). “Micro Framework” is an interesting product, it is very low cost, like zero. And it is largely community controlled under the Apache License.  A partner network is building, and the application environment is .NET. I have been following this for some time, and the community open source approach seems to be working.  There are new features/packages emerging, for example an F# programming language (ARGH! I am still wresting with VB and C#). Anyway, what I found most interesting was a port to Tron.  Tron is a very popular Japanese open source intuitive.  It is a very real time, very compact kernel, and is, like the Micro Framework, ‘free as beer’.  One limit on MF was it was not real time.  But the merger with Tron may eliminate that problem.  Certainly, if I were dealing with a consumer product with quantities in the millions (like a SmartGrid device, or a toy) I would seriously consider something out of this technology pool.

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• SQL SERVER – Demo Script – Keeping CPU Busy

  - by pinaldave

  Recently face very interesting situation, during presentations at event, I was asked very famous questions: “My CPU is very high all the time, how can I reduce it?” This is very interesting question and there are many answers and a single blog post is not good enough to justify this subject. I presented few situation to the person who asked the question. The member of the audience who asked question came to me afterwords and asked me few detailed questions. To answer him, I quickly wrote query which simulate high CPU. Here is the script which I wrote which increased CPU from 10% to 80%. I was wondering if there is any similar script which can simulate high CPU usage. If you have share with me and I will publish with due credit. Here is my script for the same: USE AdventureWorks GO DECLARE @Flag INT SET @Flag = 1 WHILE(@Flag < 1000) BEGIN ALTER INDEX [PK_SalesOrderDetail_SalesOrderID_SalesOrderDetailID] ON [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] REBUILD SET @Flag = @Flag + 1 END GO   Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Profile Picture Thumbnails, Following Projects, and Fork Collaboration

  [Do you tweet? Follow us on Twitter @matthawley and @adacole_msft] We deployed a new version of the CodePlex website last week. Profile Picture Thumbnails We have added a way to select a thumbnail from your profile picture, which will start appearing next to usernames across the site.  Managing your thumbnail is simple. From your profile page, choose Edit your profile.  On the left side, you’ll find an intuitive widget for choosing a profile picture, uploading it, and editing your thumbnail image. If you previously uploaded a profile picture, we’ve used that to generate a starter thumbnail. We welcome your suggestions and ideas for areas where seeing user thumbnails would be useful or interesting. Following Projects Based on some feedback we’ve received recently, we have taken several steps to help you discover and follow interesting and popular projects on CodePlex: The homepage now surfaces the top Projects Users are Following from the previous 7 days. When you visit any project homepage, you can see at a glance how many people follow the project. When you visit the People tab for any project, you will see both the project contributors and the 25 most recent project followers. Fork Collaboration We now support enabling collaborators on a fork based on a large number of user requests.  From the Source Code management page for your fork, you will now see the following on the right side: To add a collaborator, type in a username and click Add. All fork collaborators will have the ability to push to the fork and send/cancel pull requests.  To remove a collaborator, hover over user, and click on the X that appears: The CodePlex team values your feedback, and is frequently monitoring Twitter, our Discussions and Issue Tracker for new features or problems. If you’ve not visited the Issue Tracker recently, please take a few moments to log an idea or vote for the features you would most like to see implemented on CodePlex.

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• #1 O’Reilly eBook for 2010

  - by Jan Goyvaerts

  The year-end issue of O’Reilly’s author newsletter discussed the trends O’Reilly has been seeing the past few years, and their predictions for 2011. The key trend is that digital is now more than ever poised to take over print: Our digitally distributed products have grown from 18.36% of our publishing mix in 2009 to 28.09% of our mix in 2010. What is more impressive is that our digitally distributed products have produced more than double the revenue that has been lost with the decline of print. I think this is important because some say that digital cannibalizes print products. Our data indicates the contrary, as print is declining much more slowly than digital is growing. I think we may be seeing developers purchasing a print book, and then purchasing the electronic editions to search and copying code from, as the incremental cost for digital is more than reasonable. My own book seems to be leading this trend. Thanks to everyone who purchased it! And the five bestselling O’Reilly ebook products for 2010: 1) Regular Expressions Cookbook, 2) jQuery Cookbook, 3) Learning Python, 4) HTML5: Up and Running, and 5) JavaScript Cookbook. I think it’s interesting that the top five ebooks are code-intensive books. They’re great products for search and code reuse. It’s also interesting that none of the top 5 ebooks made the top 5 of print books.

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• CIC 2010 - Ghost Stories and Model Based Design

  - by warren.baird

  I was lucky enough to attend the collaboration and interoperability congress recently. The location was very beautiful and interesting, it was held in the mountains about two hours outside Denver, at the Stanley hotel, famous both for inspiring Steven King's novel "The Shining" and for attracting a lot of attention from the "Ghost Hunters" TV show. My visit was prosaic - I didn't get to experience the ghosts the locals promised - but interesting, with some very informative sessions. I noticed one main theme - a lot of people were talking about Model Based Design (MBD), which is moving design and manufacturing away from 2d drawings and towards 3d models. 2d has some pretty deep roots in industrial manufacturing and there have been a lot of challenges encountered in making the leap to 3d. One of the challenges discussed in several sessions was how to get model information out to the non-engineers in the company, which is a topic near and dear to my heart. In the 2D space, people without access to CAD software (for example, people assembling a product on the shop floor) can be given printouts of the design - it's not particularly efficient, and it definitely isn't very green, but it tends to work. There's no direct equivalent in the 3D space. One of the ways that AutoVue is used in industrial manufacturing is to provide non-CAD users with an easy to use, interactive 3D view of their products - in some cases it's directly used by people on the shop floor, but in cases where paper is really ingrained in the process, AutoVue can be used by a technical publications person to create illustrative 2D views that can be printed that show all of the details necessary to complete the work. Are you making the move to model based design? Is AutoVue helping you with your challenges? Let us know in the comments below.

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #003

  - by pinaldave

  Here is the list of curetted articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2006 This was the first year of my blogging and lots of new things I was learning as I go. I was indeed an infant in blogging a few years ago. However, as time passed by I have learned a lot. This year was year of experiments and new learning. 2007 Working as a full time DBA I often encoutered various errors and I started to learn how to avoid those error and document the same. ERROR Msg 5174 Each file size must be greater than or equal to 512 KB Whenever I see this error I wonder why someone is trying to attempt a database which is extremely small. Anyway, it does not matter what I think I keep on seeing this error often in industries. Anyway the solution of the error is equally interesting – just created larger database. Dilbert Humor This was very first encounter with database humor and I started to love it. It does not matter how many time we read this cartoon it does not get old. Generate Script with Data from Database – Database Publishing Wizard Generating schema script with data is one of the most frequently performed tasks among SQL Server Data Professionals. There are many ways to do the same. In the above article I demonstrated that how we can use the Database Publishing Wizard to accomplish the same. It was new to me at that time but I have not seen much of the adoption of the same still in the industry. Here is one of my videos where I demonstrate how we can generate data with schema. 2008 Delete Backup History – Cleanup Backup History Deleting backup history is important too but should be done carefully. If this is not carried out at regular interval there is good chance that MSDB will be filled up with all the old history. Every organization is different. Some would like to keep the history for 30 days and some for a year but there should be some limit. One should regularly archive the database backup history. South Asia MVP Open Days 2008 This was my very first year Microsoft MVP. I had Indeed big blast at the event and the fun was incredible. After this event I have attended many different MVP events but the fun and learning this particular event presented was amazing and just like me many others are not able to forget the same. Here are other links related to the event: South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 1 South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 2 South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 3 2009 Enable or Disable Constraint  This is very simple script but I personally keep on forgetting it so I had blogged it. Till today, I keep on referencing this again and again as sometime a very little thing is hard to remember. Policy Based Management – Create, Evaluate and Fix Policies This article will cover the most spectacular feature of SQL 2008 – Policy-based management and how the configuration of SQL Server with policy-based management architecture can make a powerful difference. Policy based management is loaded with several advantages. It can help you implement various policies for reliable configuration of the system. It also provides additional administrative assistance to DBAs and helps them effortlessly manage various tasks of SQL Server across the enterprise. SQLPASS 2009 – My Very First SQPASS Experience Just Brilliant! I never had an experience such a thing in my life. SQL SQL and SQL – all around SQL! I am listing my own reasons here in order of importance to me. Networking with SQL fellows and experts Putting face to the name or avatar Learning and improving my SQL skills Understanding the structure of the largest SQL Server Professional Association Attending my favorite training sessions Since last time I have never missed a single time this event. This event is my favorite event and something keeps me going. Here are additional post related SQLPASS 2009. SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 1 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 2 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 3 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 4 2010 Get All the Information of Database using sys.databases Even though we believe that we know everything about our database, we do not know a lot of things about our database. This little script enables us to know so many details about databases which we may not be familiar with. Run this on your server today and see how much you know your database. Reducing CXPACKET Wait Stats for High Transactional Database While engaging in a performance tuning consultation for a client, a situation occurred where they were facing a lot of CXPACKET Waits Stats. The client asked me if I could help them reduce this huge number of wait stats. I usually receive this kind of request from other client as well, but the important thing to understand is whether this question has any merits or benefits, or not. I discusses the same in this article – a bit long but insightful for sure. Error related to Database in Use There are so many database management operations in SQL Server which requires exclusive access to the database and it is not always possible to get it. When any database is online in SQL Server it either applications or system thread often accesses them. This means database can’t have exclusive access and the operations which required this access throws an error. There is very easy method to overcome this minor issue – a single line script can give you exclusive access to the database. Difference between DATETIME and DATETIME2 Developers have found the root reason of the problem when dealing with Date Functions – when data time values are converted (implicit or explicit) between different data types, which would lose some precision, so the result cannot match each other as expected. In this blog post I go over very interesting details and difference between DATETIME and DATETIME2 History of SQL Server Database Encryption I recently met Michael Coles and Rodeney Landrum the author of one of the kind book Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption at SQLPASS in Seattle. During the conversation we ended up how Microsoft is evolving encryption technology. The same discussion lead to talking about history of encryption tools in SQL Server. Michale pointed me to page 18 of his book of encryption. He explicitly gave me permission to re-produce relevant part of history from his book. 2011 Functions FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause and ORDER BY Some time an interesting feature and smart audience make a total difference in places. From last two days, I have been writing on SQL Server 2012 feature FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE. I created a puzzle which was very interesting and got many people attempt to resolve it. It was based on following two articles: Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause I even provided the hint about how one can solve this problem. The best part was many people solved the problem without using hints! Try your luck!  A Real Story of Book Getting ‘Out of Stock’ to A 25% Discount Story Available This is a great problem and everybody would love to have it. We had it and we loved it. Our book got out of stock in 48 hours of releasing and stocks were empty. We faced many issues and learned many valuable lessons. Some we were able to avoid in the future and some we are still facing it as those problems have no solutions. However, since that day – our books never gone out of stock. This inspiring learning story for us and I am confident that you will love to read it as well. Introduction to LEAD and LAG – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012 SQL Server 2012 introduces new analytical function LEAD() and LAG(). This function accesses data from a subsequent row (for lead) and previous row (for lag) in the same result set without the use of a self-join . It will be very difficult to explain this in words so I will attempt small example to explain you this function. I had a fantastic time writing this blog post and I am very confident when you read it, you will like the same. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• What is the Xbox360's D3DRS_VIEWPORTENABLE equivalent on WinXP D3D9?

  - by Jim Buck

  I posted this on StackOverlow, but of course it should be posted here. I am maintaining a multiplatform codebase for Xbox360 and WinXP. I am seeing an issue on the XP side that appears to be related to D3DRS_VIEWPORTENABLE on the Xbox360 version not having an equivalent on WinXP D3D9. This article had an interesting idea, but the only way to construct an identity matrix is to supply negative numbers to D3DVIEWPORT9::X and D3DVIEWPORT9::Height, but they are unsigned numbers. (I tried to put in negative numbers anyway, but nothing interesting happened.) So, how does one emulate the behavior of D3DRS_VIEWPORTENABLE under WinXP/D3D9? (For clarity, the result I'm seeing is that a 2d screen-aligned quad works fine on Xbox360 but is offset/stretched on WinXP. In fact, the (0, 0) starts in the center of the screen on WinXP instead of in the lower-left corner like on the Xbox360 as a result of applying the viewport transform.) Update: I didn't have an Xbox360 devkit at the time I wrote up this question, but I've since gotten one. I commented out the disabling of the D3DRS_VIEWPORTENABLE state, and the exact same behavior resulted on the Xbox360 as on the WinXP build. So, there must be some DirectX magic to bridge the gap here for emulating D3DRS_VIEWPORTENABLE being turned off on WinXP.

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• Making of Amar Chitra Katha Comics – Behind The Scenes

  - by Gopinath

  Couple of days ago there was a book fair at our work place and found very interesting comic books for children in a crowded stall. The comic are mostly based on Indian mythologies, historians and the legends who inspired the generations. By flicking couple of book pages I fell in love with them and decided that my next gifts I’m going to buy for kids is going to be one of these comic books. After speaking to the sales men, I came to know that these comic books are very popular in among the kids and elders by the name, Amar Chitra Katha. I found myself ashamed of being ignorant about these popular books and started doing a bit of research. The Amar Chitra Katha comics is started in 1967 by Anant Pai, who was recently honoured by Google India with a doodle. The comic books are published in 20 Indian languages, 440+ titles are released so far and over a million copies are sold since the inception. Here is an interesting video i found on labnol blog that takes us through the journey of behind the scenes making Amar Chitra Katha comics You can browse through the collection of comics on their website amarchitrakatha.com and place orders for free shipping around the globe. For those who care to teach children about the history and great leaders of India, I strongly recommend them to gift of Amar Chitra Katha. This article titled,Making of Amar Chitra Katha Comics – Behind The Scenes, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• List SQL Server Instances using the Registry

  - by BuckWoody

  I read this interesting article on using PowerShell and the registry, and thought I would modify his information a bit to list the SQL Server Instances on a box. The interesting thing about listing instances this was is that you can touch remote machines, find the instances when they are off and so on. Anyway, here’s the scriptlet I used to find the Instances on my system: $MachineName = '.' $reg = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey]::OpenRemoteBaseKey('LocalMachine', $MachineName) $regKey= $reg.OpenSubKey("SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Microsoft SQL Server\\Instance Names\\SQL" ) $regkey.GetValueNames() You can read more of his article to find out the reason for the remote registry call and so forth – there are also security implications here for being able to read the registry. Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. Yes, there are always multiple ways to do things, and this script may not work in every situation, for everything. It’s just a script, people. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• DevDays ‘00 The Netherlands day #2

  - by erwin21

  Day 2 of DevDays 2010 and again 5 interesting sessions at the World Forum in The Hague. The first session of the today in the big world forum theater was from Scott Hanselman, he gives a lap around .NET 4.0. In his way of presenting he talked about all kind of new features of .NET 4.0 like MEF, threading, parallel processing, changes and additions to the CLR and DLR, WPF and all new language features of .NET 4.0. After a small break it was ready for session 2 from Scott Allen about Tips, Tricks and Optimizations of LINQ. He talked about lazy and deferred executions, the difference between IQueryable and IEnumerable and the two flavors of LINQ syntax. The lunch was again very good prepared and delicious, but after that it was time for session 3 Web Vulnerabilities and Exploits from Alex Thissen. This was no normal session but more like a workshop, we decided what kind of subjects we discussed, the subjects where OWASP, XSS and other injections, validation, encoding. He gave some handy tips and tricks how to prevent such attacks. Session 4 was about the new features of C# 4.0 from Alex van Beek. He talked about Optional- en Named Parameters, Generic Co- en Contra Variance, Dynamic keyword and COM Interop features. He showed how to use them but also when not to use them. The last session of today and also the last session of DevDays 2010 was about WCF Best Practices from Gerben van Loon. He talked about 7 best practices that you must know when you are going to use WCF. With some quick demos he showed the problem and the solution for some common issues. It where two interesting days and next year i sure will be attending again.

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• Bing brings Twitter aggregation to search results

  - by jamiet

  I read with interest today a post on the Bing blog Get the Latest on Twitter with Bing Social Search which describes how tweets are soon going to show up in Bing search results. On the surface that isn’t very interesting, Google has been doing this for a while, but of particular interest to myself was the following screenshot: We can see at the bottom of a search result for “TMZ” that Bing is showing us the most popular TMZ stories as determined by the number of tweets that contain links to them. This is great. Bing are applying a principle that those of us in the Business Intelligence (BI) trade have known for ages: a piece of data in isolation is not very interesting but when you aggregate a lot of that data you find the trends that actually matter and when you surface that data in a meaningful way then people can derive real value from it. That sounds obvious but this new Bing feature is the first time I have seen the principle applied in a useful way to tweets and I applaud them for that; its certainly a lot more useful than the pointless constant tweet scroll that you see on Google. What a shame its going to be, yet again from Bing, a US-only feature. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Use Your Chart-Drawing Skills to Win a Free Chrome Cr-48 Notebook

  - by ETC

  Today Google announced that they are partnering with a number of Chrome web application developers to distribute a number of their Chrome OS Notebooks to lucky fans. That’s when we noticed something interesting that can greatly increase your odds of getting one. Unlike Box, MOG, and Zoho, who are doing random giveaways, the LucidChart giveaway is based on a contest of skill – they are picking the best drawings using their flowchart tool and giving away Chrome Notebooks to the winners. So all you have to do is create one of the most interesting drawings / charts, and you will get your hands on one. We’ve also confirmed this with the fine people at LucidChart, who told us “any user who spends a bit of time and effort to do something creative has a good shot at winning one.” How great is the Chrome Cr-48 Notebook? What’s it all about? We wouldn’t know, since Google hasn’t given us here at How-To Geek an opportunity to use one, despite our attempts. It’s sad, since we’re huge fans of the Chrome browser, that we can’t share our Chrome notebook experiences with hundreds of thousands of daily subscribers and millions of monthly visitors. Hint. Hint. Win a Chrome Cr-48 notebook from LucidChart [LucidChart] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image How To Process Camera Raw Without Paying for Adobe Photoshop How Do You Block Annoying Text Message (SMS) Spam? How to Use and Master the Notoriously Difficult Pen Tool in Photoshop HTG Explains: What Are the Differences Between All Those Audio Formats? How To Use Layer Masks and Vector Masks to Remove Complex Backgrounds in Photoshop Bring Summer Back to Your Desktop with the LandscapeTheme for Chrome and Iron The Prospector – Home Dash Extension Creates a Whole New Browsing Experience in Firefox KinEmote Links Kinect to Windows Why Nobody Reads Web Site Privacy Policies [Infographic] Asian Temple in the Snow Wallpaper 10 Weird Gaming Records from the Guinness Book

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• SQL Monitor Alerts in Outlook Without Configuring Email Settings

  - by Fatherjack

  SQL Monitor is a Red Gate tool that I have a long history with and I have worked closely with the development team from a time before it was called SQL Monitor. It is with that history in mind I am a little disappointed in myself that I have only just found out about a pretty cool feature. Out of the box SQL Monitor keeps itself to itself, it busily goes about watching over your servers, noting down when things look suspicious, change drastically or are just out and out wrong. You have to go into the settings and provide email details (SMTP server, account details etc.) before it starts getting at all intrusive with warning and alerts on the condition of your servers. However, it was after installing the most recent version that I was going through the application screen by screen looking for new and interesting changes that I noticed something that had avoided my attention. On the Alerts tab there is an option in the left hand menu. I don’t know how long ago it appeared or why I have never explored it previously but it appears that you can see your Alerts in the format of an RSS feed. Now when you click that link you are taken to a page that is the raw RSS XML – not too interesting but clearly you can use this in an RSS aggregator. Such as Outlook. Note the URL in the newly opened page take it with you into Outlook. For me it is in the form of http://SQLMonitorServerName/Alerts/Inbox/Feed. Again, this is something that I have only recently noticed – Outlook can aggregate RSS feeds. Down below the Inbox, Drafts folders etc, one up from the bottom is RSS Feeds. If you right click that and choose to Add a feed then you can supply the URL for SQL Monitor Alerts: And there you have it, your SQL Monitor Alerts available in Outlook where you can keep an eye on the number of unread items and pick them off at your convenience.

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• List SQL Server Instances using the Registry

  - by BuckWoody

  I read this interesting article on using PowerShell and the registry, and thought I would modify his information a bit to list the SQL Server Instances on a box. The interesting thing about listing instances this was is that you can touch remote machines, find the instances when they are off and so on. Anyway, here’s the scriptlet I used to find the Instances on my system: $MachineName = '.' $reg = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey]::OpenRemoteBaseKey('LocalMachine', $MachineName) $regKey= $reg.OpenSubKey("SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Microsoft SQL Server\\Instance Names\\SQL" ) $regkey.GetValueNames() You can read more of his article to find out the reason for the remote registry call and so forth – there are also security implications here for being able to read the registry. Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. Yes, there are always multiple ways to do things, and this script may not work in every situation, for everything. It’s just a script, people. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates

  - by ETC

  The final round of IBM’s Watson against Ken Jenning and Brad Rutter ended last night with Watson coming out in a strong lead against its two human opponents. Read on to catch a video of the match and see just how quick Watson is on the draw. Watson tore through many of the answers, the little probability bar at the bottom of the screen denoting it was often 95%+ confident in its answers. Some of the more interesting stumbles were, like in the last matches, based on nuance. By far the biggest “What?” moment of the night, however, was when it answered the Daily Double question of “The New Yorker’s 1959 review of this said in its brevity and clarity, it is ‘unlike most such manuals, a book as well as a tool’”. Watson, inexplicably, answered “Dorothy Parker”. You can win them all, eh? Check out the video below to see Watson in action on its final day. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope Walking Through a Seaside Village Wallpaper

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• Iva&rsquo;s internship story

  - by anca.rosu

  Hello, my name is Iva and I am a member of the Internship program at Oracle Czech. When I joined Oracle, I initially worked as an Alliances and Channel Marketing Assistant at Oracle Czech Republic, but most recently, I have been working in the Demand Generation Team. I am a student of the Economics and Management Faculty at Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, specializing in Marketing, Business and Administration. I have recently passed my Bachelor exams. I received the information about Oracle’s Internship opportunity from a friend. I joined Oracle in September 2008 and worked as an Alliances and Channel Marketing Assistant until May 2009. Here I was responsible for the Open Market Model (OMM) and at the same time I was covering communication with Partners, Oracle Events and Team Buildings as well as creating Partner Databases and Reports. At the moment, I support our Demand Generation Team to execute Direct Marketing campaigns in Czech Republic, Slovak Republic and Hungary. In addition to this, I help with Reporting and Contact Data Management for the whole of the European Enlargement (EE) and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) regions. I enjoy my job and I appreciate the experience. Every day is interesting, because every day I learn something new. I am very happy that I was presented with an opportunity to work at Oracle and cooperate with friendly people in a multicultural environment. Oracle gives me the chance to develop my skills and start building my career. I am able to attend interesting training classes, improve my language skills and enjoy sporting activities, such as squash, swimming and aerobics, at the same time. If you dream of working in an international company and you would like to join a very dynamic industry, I really can recommend Oracle without a doubt, even if you have no IT background! If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact  [email protected].  You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com   Technorati Tags: Internship program,Oracle Czech,Economics,Management Faculty,Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague,Demand Generation Team

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• SQL SERVER – New Look for CodePlexProject – Hosting for Open Source Software

  - by pinaldave

  Codeplex is my favorite site. CodePlex is Microsoft’s free open source project hosting site. You can create projects to share with the world, collaborate with others on their projects, and download open source software. It is great place to find so many open source project available to explore. All the softwares are free and open source. I often go there at intervals to check what is new in SQL Server field as well on other technologies. Yesterday when I visited it, I had nice surprise as it has total makeover and looks very decent as well elegant at the same time. I have noticed that when I talk about Codeplex is user community, not everybody knows about it. The quickest way I explain what is codeplex is that I start naming few of the projects which are available there and suddenly I start noticing a few hands going up knowing the projects. This is indirect way to prove that many of us know CodePlex usability but do not pay special attention to what it is actually. Let me name a few popular projects of the CodePlex here. SQL Server Sample Database [link] Image Resizer for Windows [link] Ajax Control Toolkit [link] Skype Voice Changer [link] Silverlight Toolkit [link] Windows 7 USB/DBD Download Tool [link] Orchard Project [link] There are very interesting SQL Server projects available on Codeplex as well. I am listing few of them here for reference in listed in no particular order. SQL Server Sample Database [link] SQL Server Compact ToolBox [link] Microsoft Drivers for PHP for SQL Server [link] Internals Viewer for SQL Server [link] SQL Server Spatial Tooks [link] SQL Monitor – managing sql server performance [link] SQL Server 2008 Extended Events SSMS Addin [link] How many of above mentioned project have you come across earlier? Leave a comment it will be interesting to know what our community is familiar with. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• A little tidbit on Team Build 2010 and error MSB3147

  - by Enrique Lima

  The problem? Performing a build on a ClickOnce solution would not be successful due to the setup.bin not being located. Ok, now what? Researched from corner to corner, install, re-install, update.  Found some interesting posts to fix the issue, but most of them were focused on Team Foundation Server/Team Build 2008, and some other on 2005.  The other interesting tidbit was the frequent indication to modify the registry to help Team Build find the bootstrapper. Background info:  This was a migration I posted about a few days ago, a 32 bit TFS implementation to a full 64 bit TFS implementation.  Now, the project has binaries and dependencies on X86 (This piece of information became essential to moving from a failed build to a successful build). So, what’s the fix? The trick in this case was to go back into the Build Type and check the properties/configuration.  Upon further investigation, I found the following:  Once you Edit the Build Definition, then select Process, expand 3. Advanced and look for MSBuild Platform, switch from Auto to X86.  Ran the Build, and success!

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