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• When the obvious answer is obviously wrong

  - by John Paul Cook

  This post is about how simple math in T-SQL can produce undesirable results, but first we begin with a math quiz. Answer the following as quickly as possible: You just read pages 100-300 of a book. How many pages did you read? QUICKLY NOW! For those of you who answered 200 pages, I have a new question: Which page did you not read? There were 201 pages to read. If you read 200 pages, you skipped a page! What your answer be if I asked you how many pages did you read if you read pages 1-3? Three pages!...(read more)

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• how do I get dual monitors to work properly in Ubuntu 11.10 on a Dell Latitude D630?

  - by wes cook

  I have spent a lot of time trying to get dual monitors to work on Ubuntu 11.10 on my Dell Latitude D630 (nVidia NVS 135m video card). - For starters, the System Displays settings app always only showed one unknown monitor, even though I had the external Acer monitor connected. - So I downloaded and installed the nVidia drivers. According to what I read I would need to only use the nVidia driver app (nVidia X Server Settings), so that's what I've done. (System Displays settings continued to only show a single monitor anyway). - nVidia settings app only showed on monitor until I changed the BIOS setting to use the onboard video for external monitor (not the dock video, which it was set to, even though I don't have a docking station). - The nVidia setting app now recognized both monitors. So, I setup the X Server display config as Separate X screen for both monitors. My laptop screen shows up as AUO 1440x900 and my external monitor as Acer E211H 1920x1080. - Everything seemed like it would work, but the external monitor was just a complete white screen. The external monitor was non-functional, even though sometimes it would show the background image - still nothing would show up over there. - So, I checked the Enable Xinerama box. - Now, after logging out and back in, the wallpaper extends to both screens but I get no taskbar at the bottom or top, no system menus, and I have to press the power button to restart or log off. - After experimenting with all the shells, the only one that shows the menus and taskbars when I log in is Gnome Classic. - This is pretty much the same symptoms as found here: How do I fix 11.10 GUI?. - So, I resign myself to the older shell. - Everything works fine until ... I unplug the external monitor ... this is a laptop after all. - Anyway, after doing some work on the road, I plug back in and I still see both screens and it's functional except, ... - Now, the laptop screen (with the taskbar and menu bar) has 4 black bars at the top that windows cannot cover. The top bar is the menu bar (with Applications, Places, the date and time and the system menu on the right). But the next 3 bars (the same height as the top menu bar) are empty and are just reducing the max size of windows on that screen. - See screenshot here: http://i39.tinypic.com/35d2kh1.png - So ... 1. How do I get rid of those extra 3 black bars? They're taking valuable screen space. 2. (less critical) How do I successfully use both screens in the Ubuntu or Ubuntu 2D shell?

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• Run your cpus fast but not hot

  - by John Paul Cook

  Paul Randall recently blogged about the importance of checking to make sure you are getting every bit of speed you should from your cpus. He recommended that people use CPU-Z , a free tool I recommend and have been using for many years. Power saving features in a cpu are great for laptops. Battery life is greatly extended when a processor isn't running to the max all of the time. But this isn't necessarily a good thing for a server. As Paul and others have pointed out, the processor might not get...(read more)

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• finding a WUXGA or matte laptop

  - by John Paul Cook

  UPDATED: HP still sells 17" WUXGA laptops - details in the new paragraph at the end. Lenovo, Dell, Sony and Sager do not sell a 1920x1200 (WUXGA) laptop. I understand that manufacturers provide what there is market demand for. I also understand that HDTV and the 1080p standard is heavily influencing both monitor and laptop screen resolutions. But I do not understand why there is so little demand for a WUXGA laptop. Nor do I understand the popularity of glossy displays. I really don't like to look...(read more)

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• Installing Microsoft Atlanta

  - by John Paul Cook

  Since my previous post on Microsoft Atlanta, I've been asked how someone can get started with it. Go to https://www.microsoftatlanta.com/ and click the Create Account button using a Windows Live id such as a Hotmail account. If you don’t have Silverlight installed, you’ll be prompted to install it somewhere along the way. I encourage you to install Atlanta and try it out. The product is still being developed and your early feedback can make a difference. When you click Download Registration Certificate...(read more)

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• Visual Studio 2012 and Oracle Development Environment

  - by John Paul Cook

  Creating a complete environment for developing .NET applications that target Oracle requires a little planning and understanding of how Oracle connectivity works. You need to be methodical and test along the way so that you aren’t trying to troubleshoot a multitude of interrelated problems at the end. I’ve made several assumptions in writing this post: You are using 64-bit Windows 7 because you are developer with a lot of ram. I think this post will help you even if you are running Windows 8 instead...(read more)

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• Script to create or drop all primary keys now on TechNet Wiki.

  - by John Paul Cook

  I posted my script to create or drop all primary keys on the TechNet Wiki. You can find it at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/script-to-create-or-drop-all-primary-keys.aspx . I first published the script here in 2009 and I've always wanted a way for the community to enhance it or correct it. The TechNet Wiki makes that possible. Visit the Wiki and see if you like this approach to publishing scripts....(read more)

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• WUXGA revisited

  - by John Paul Cook

  I previously blogged about my search for a 17” 1920x1200 laptop. The only one I could find was a 17” MacBook Pro, which has been an excellent machine for running Windows and SQL Server. It is no longer made. Apple has a few refurbished ones available. Just be sure to get a matte display if you buy one. If you want WUXGA resolution or better in a laptop, your only off the shelf option is now the 15” MacBook Pro with the Retina display, which is 2880x1800. This exceeds the resolution of my 30” 2560x1600...(read more)

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• Do you know your DNS server?

  - by John Paul Cook

  If you don’t know your DNS server is valid, you need to find out before July 9. The FBI found rogue DNS servers and replaced them with clean, safe DNS servers to protect the public. These safe, clean servers will be turned off on July 9, 2012. If your computer was compromised to use the rogue servers, it will stop resolving DNS queries on July 9 when the clean servers are turned off. The FBI has provided full technical details at http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/november/malware_110911/DNS-changer-malware.pdf...(read more)

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• Overwhelmed by complex C#/ASP.NET project in Visual Studio 2008

  - by Darren Cook

  I have been hired as a junior programmer to work on projects that extend existing functionality in a very large, complex solution. The code base consists of C#, ASP.NET, jQuery, javascript, html and xml. I have some knowledge of all these in addition to fair knowledge of object-oriented programming and its fundamental concepts of inheritance, abstraction, polymorphism and encapsulation. I can follow code up through its base classes, interfaces, abstract classes and understand a large part of the code that I read while doing this. However, this solution is so humongous and so many things get tied together whenever I navigate through the code that I feel absolutely overwhelmed. I often find myself unable to fully follow everything that is going on with objects being serialized, large amounts of C# and javascript operating on the same pages and methods being called from template files that consist mainly of markup. I love learning about code, but trying to deal with this really stresses me out. Additionally, I do know that a significant amount of unit testing has been done but I know nothing about unit testing or how to utilize it. Any advice anyone could offer me regarding dealing with a large code base while using Visual Studio 2008 would be greatly appreciated. Are there tools that I can use to help get a handle on what is going on? Perhaps there are things even in Visual Studio that I am not aware of. How can I follow the code to low level functionality in order to get a better grasp of what is going on at a high level?

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• Windows 8 client virtualization

  - by John Paul Cook

  Hyper-V is coming to Windows 8, but you must have a processor that supports SLAT. Virtual machines created with Virtual PC aren’t easily transferred to Windows 2008 Hyper-V and vice-versa. With Windows 8, it will be easy to move vhds from Windows 8 on your laptop or desktop to Windows 8 server and back again. To find out if your processor supports SLAT, run coreinfo –v from a command window running as administrator. Download coreinfo from here . My MacBook Pro supports SLAT as this output shows:...(read more)

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• Printing PowerPoint slides in black and white

  - by John Paul Cook

  When I do SQL Server training, sometimes students want to print all of the PowerPoint slides and use them for note taking during class. For such purposes, the background is usually better off being suppressed. This is most efficiently done by changing Print Settings as shown below: Personally I recommend that people take notes directly in the slides instead of printing them. PowerPoint has a notes area. If you do want to print slides and notes, once again use the Print Settings to specify this:...(read more)

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• How to Create Effective Error Reports

  - by John Paul Cook

  This post demonstrates some generic problem reporting steps that I encourage all users, whether developers or nontechnical end users, to follow. SQL Server has a feature that can help. So does Windows in some cases. More on those in Step 3. Step 1: Is the problem caused by a particular action undertaken on a gui? If so, you should get a screen capture. But if it is caused by executing some T-SQL code in a query window, just copy/paste the offending code as text. There are several ways to get a screen...(read more)

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• Many-to-many relationships in pharmacology

  - by John Paul Cook

  When I was in my pharmacology class this morning, I realized that the instructor was presenting a classic relational database management system problem: the many-to-many relationship. He said that all of us in nursing school must know our drugs backwards and forwards. I know how to model that! There are so many things in both healthcare and higher education that could benefit from an appropriate application of technology. As a student, I'd like to be able to start with a drug, a disease, a name of...(read more)

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• Printing PowerPoint slides in black and white

  - by John Paul Cook

  When I do SQL Server training, sometimes students want to print all of the PowerPoint slides and use them for note taking during class. For such purposes, the background is usually better off being suppressed. This is most efficiently done by changing Print Settings as shown below: Personally I recommend that people take notes directly in the slides instead of printing them. PowerPoint has a notes area. If you do want to print slides and notes, once again use the Print Settings to specify this:...(read more)

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• Using Alt-select in SSMS, Word, and elsewhere

  - by John Paul Cook

  A surprising number of database people and Windows users in general don’t know about Alt select . This is a Windows technique not unique to SSMS that allows a user to select an arbitrary rectangular region of text and delete it, cut it, or copy it. Where I find Alt select particularly useful in SSMS is when I have a bunch of inline comments that are too far to the right. I want to delete much of the whitespace in front of them to move them to the left without disturbing any of the rest of the T-SQL....(read more)

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• Genetic Considerations in User Interface Design

  - by John Paul Cook

  There are several different genetic factors that are highly relevant to good user interface design. Color blindness is probably the best known. But did you know about motion sickness and epilepsy? We’ve been discussing how genetic factors should be considered in user interface design in one of my classes at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. According to the National Library of Medicine, approximately 8% of males and 0.5% of females have red-green color discrimination problems with the most...(read more)

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• Social media and special characters

  - by John Paul Cook

  I’ve previously blogged about using Unicode with T-SQL to put superscripts, subscripts, and special characters into text strings. Unicode is also useful in formatting social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and that dinosaur otherwise known as email. When you can’t set properties of text such as italicizing the subject line of an email message or adding subscripts to a Facebook post, Unicode can make it possible. There are Unicode characters that are intrinsically italicized. Others are intrinsically...(read more)

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• New free SQL Azure offer

  - by John Paul Cook

  Microsoft has a new and better way to get a free Azure account for a month. All you need to do to sign up is provide your Windows Live Id and register at http://bit.ly/CRAzurePass using promotional code DPCE01 . This is a great way to learn about SQL Azure and improve your skills. You might be interested in downloading the SQL Azure version of the AdventureWorks database from Codeplex ....(read more)

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• Windows 8 Consumer Preview and SkyDrive

  - by John Paul Cook

  SkyDrive integrates very nicely with Windows 8. More on that later. First, let’s discuss using Windows 8 x64 on VirtualBox. Since I wanted to test with x64 and didn’t have a Hyper-V server available, I used VirtualBox. The latest version of VirtualBox does list Windows 8 as a guest operating system choice. The first time I attempted the installation, I chose the experimental Direct3D graphics support. That didn’t work well. After what seemed like FOREVER looking at a completely black screen, I decided...(read more)

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• Surface Pro 3 first impressions

  - by John Paul Cook

  I traded in my Surface 2 (the trade-in program is now over) and bought a Surface Pro 3 with an i7 processor and 8 GB of ram. I greatly prefer the 3 by 2 aspect ratio of the Surface 3. After only one day of ownership, I’ve decided to purchase a docking station. I have a 7 year old desktop with a quad core Q6600 processor overclocked to 3.0 GHz and 8 GB of ram. It has a Plextor 512 MB SSD as the primary drive. It’s a very capable machine, but it does have a little bit, and I do mean only a little bit,...(read more)

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• Excel 2013 Data Explorer and GeoFlow make 3-D maps quick and easy

  - by John Paul Cook

  Excel add-ins Data Explorer and GeoFlow work well together, mainly because they just work. Simple, fast, and powerful. I started Excel 2013, used Data Explorer to search for, examine, and then download latitude-longitude data and finally used GeoFlow to plot an interactive 3-D visualization. I didn’t use any fancy Excel commands and the entire process took less than 3 minutes. You can download the GeoFlow preview from here . It can also be used with Office 365. Start by clicking the DATA EXPLORER...(read more)

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• Working with legacy data

  - by John Paul Cook

  We encounter legacy data as a part of life. Colleges and universities have transcript records dating back decades or even centuries. Real estate property records in the United States go as far back as Spanish and British land grants in the 1500s. Very old records are completely paper based and may be completely manually prepared, perhaps typed on a typewriter or written in longhand with a quill pen. How long should transcripts be retained? Nola Ochs graduated from college at age 95 (can you imagine...(read more)

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• Speaking at Houston Techfest on September 8

  - by John Paul Cook

  I’m giving my talk on SQL Server and SSMS Tips and Tricks at Houston Techfest on September 8, 2012. It will be similar to the one I gave at last year’s Techfest and also the one I gave at the Houston SQL Server User Group meeting last month. It will be mostly different from the one I gave at the last SQL Saturday in Houston. I will cover regular expressions. If you bring your laptop with you, you can follow along with me to make sure you leave able to actually use regular expressions. If you are...(read more)

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• Windows Not Sleeping All Night

  - by John Paul Cook

  Having a computer wake up when you don’t want it to wastes electricity and drains the battery on mobile devices. My desktop had been waking up at night, so I assumed it was some network traffic on my home network. I unchecked Allow this device to wake the computer on my network adapters . Figure 1. Network adapter Power Management tab. That didn’t solve the problem. I included the screen capture in Figure 1 because it could be part of the solution for someone else. To identify the root cause instead...(read more)

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