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Is it possible to filter data used by pivot table based on filtering the rows in a source table in Excel?

- by Geoffrey Stoel

I have developed a dashboard in Excel 2007 that uses one source table in a sheet (being filled with a query on our data warehouse) and multiple pivot tables making different cross sections on this data. I use the GETPIVOTDATA in almost a hundred formulas to give me the right value for a specific indicator in my dashboard. This all works fine. However I now have received the question to make the dashboard for 5 different segments. As you can imagine I don't want to create 5 different workbooks for this and need to maintain the dashboard logic on all of them. So my question is the following. Is it possible to automatically (through VBA or any other means) filter the results in my source table which is the source for my pivot tables and thus for my dashboard values. So schematically: DATABASE_VIEW -- SOURCE_TABLE -- 12 pivot tables -- 100 GETPIVOTDATA functions Preferably I would like to load all the segments in the source_table (one view on my database) and then filter the data in the source table, which results in filterd source_dat for my pivots. This way I can (without requerying the db) quickly change between segments in the dashboards (refreshing pivots only). Data in the source table has the column: CUSTOMER_SEGMENT available to filter upon. Any help is appreciated. Geoffrey

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Database contents setting themselves to 0

- by Luis Armando

I have a Database that contains 4 tables, however I'm using 1 of them which is separated from the others. In this table I have 4 fields which are varchar and the rest are ints (11 other fields), when the users fill up the DB everything gets saved correctly, however it has happened 3 times so far that the database values for the int's reset to 0 without any apparent reason. At first, I thought, it was because those fields (where the numbers should go) were varchars not ints. However since I changed it, it happened again. I've already double checked my code and I have nothing that even updates or inserts a 0 value. Also I'm using codeigniter and active records which protect against SQL injections AND have XSS filtering enabled, could anyone point out something I might be missing or a reason for this to be happening? Also, I'm pretty sure about the answer of this but, is there ANY way to recover some data?? Other than having to ask everyone to fill in everything again.. =/ ** EDIT ** The Storage Engine is MyISAM and Collation is latin1_swedish_ci, Pack Keys are default, for all intents and purposes it's a normal DB

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Fast way to manually mod a number

- by Nikolai Mushegian

I need to be able to calculate (a^b) % c for very large values of a and b (which individually are pushing limit and which cause overflow errors when you try to calculate a^b). For small enough numbers, using the identity (a^b)%c = (a%c)^b%c works, but if c is too large this doesn't really help. I wrote a loop to do the mod operation manually, one a at a time: private static long no_Overflow_Mod(ulong num_base, ulong num_exponent, ulong mod) { long answer = 1; for (int x = 0; x < num_exponent; x++) { answer = (answer * num_base) % mod; } return answer; } but this takes a very long time. Is there any simple and fast way to do this operation without actually having to take a to the power of b AND without using time-consuming loops? If all else fails, I can make a bool array to represent a huge data type and figure out how to do this with bitwise operators, but there has to be a better way.

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Two entities with @ManyToOne should join the same table

- by Ivan Yatskevich

I have the following entities Student @Entity public class Student implements Serializable { @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO) private Long id; //getter and setter for id } Teacher @Entity public class Teacher implements Serializable { @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO) private Long id; //getter and setter for id } Task @Entity public class Task implements Serializable { @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO) private Long id; @ManyToOne(optional = false) @JoinTable(name = "student_task", inverseJoinColumns = { @JoinColumn(name = "student_id") }) private Student author; @ManyToOne(optional = false) @JoinTable(name = "student_task", inverseJoinColumns = { @JoinColumn(name = "teacher_id") }) private Teacher curator; //getters and setters } Consider that author and curator are already stored in DB and both are in the attached state. I'm trying to persist my Task: Task task = new Task(); task.setAuthor(author); task.setCurator(curator); entityManager.persist(task); Hibernate executes the following SQL: insert into student_task (teacher_id, id) values (?, ?) which, of course, leads to null value in column "student_id" violates not-null constraint Can anyone explain this issue and possible ways to resolve it?

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FileHelpers cannot map converted field into destination array

- by jaffa

I have the following record (reduced for brevity): [DelimitedRecord(",")] [IgnoreFirst] [IgnoreEmptyLines()] public class ImportRecord { [FieldQuoted] [FieldTrim(TrimMode.Both)] public string FirstName; [FieldQuoted] [FieldTrim(TrimMode.Both)] public string LastName; [FieldQuoted] [FieldTrim(TrimMode.Both)] [FieldOptional] [FieldConverter(typeof(TestPropertyConverter))] public int[] TestProperty; } Converter code: public class TestPropertyConverter : ConverterBase { public override object StringToField(string from) { var ret = from.Split('|').Select(x => Convert.ToInt32(x)).ToArray(); return ret; } } So an example record could be: John, Smith, 1|2|3|4 It would expect the values 1,2,3,4 to expand and fill the TestProperty array. However, I'm getting the following exception: At least one element in the source array could not be cast down to the destination array type. I've tried to debug into the code and it seems to blow-up in the ExtractFieldValue() function inside FieldBase.cs where it tries to return out of the function. The following line seems to be the culprit: res.ToArray(ArrayType); It seems to expect the 'res' variable to be the destination type array, but it contains 1 element of the array itself. Can anyone suggest if I'm doing this wrong or a possible fix?

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Update Options on Existing jQuery Object

- by Vince Kronlein

I'm using Bootstrap and DataTables in my app and I have a default initializer for tables based on class. I can just add the class data-table to the table and it gets instantiated with the default values I want. I'd like to know how to change or update specific options based on a specific table. if ($.fn.dataTable) { $('.data-table').dataTable( { sDom: "R<'row'<'span6'l><'span6'f>r>t<'row'<'span6'i><'span6'p>>", sPaginationType: "bootstrap", oLanguage: { "sLengthMenu": "_MENU_   records per page" }, aoColumnDefs: [ { "bSortable": false, "aTargets": [ 0 ] } ] }); } All my data tables have a checkbox in the first column so the above removal of sorting works for all of them. But I'd like to be able to update the aoColumnDefs on a table by table basis so I can add other columns that I don't want sorted. So let's say I have a table: $('#member-list'), how do I access this object and update it's datatables options in jQuery? I can't find any reference or help anywhere. Thanks a lot! -V

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How to write this snippet in Python?

- by morpheous

I am learning Python (I have a C/C++ background). I need to write something practical in Python though, whilst learning. I have the following pseudocode (my first attempt at writing a Python script, since reading about Python yesterday). Hopefully, the snippet details the logic of what I want to do. BTW I am using python 2.6 on Ubuntu Karmic. Assume the script is invoked as: script_name.py directory_path import csv, sys, os, glob # Can I declare that the function accepts a dictionary as first arg? def getItemValue(item, key, defval) return !item.haskey(key) ? defval : item[key] dirname = sys.argv[1] # declare some default values here weight, is_male, default_city_id = 100, true, 1 # fetch some data from a database table into a nested dictionary, indexed by a string curr_dict = load_dict_from_db('foo') #iterate through all the files matching *.csv in the specified folder for infile in glob.glob( os.path.join(dirname, '*.csv') ): #get the file name (without the '.csv' extension) code = infile[0:-4] # open file, and iterate through the rows of the current file (a CSV file) f = open(infile, 'rt') try: reader = csv.reader(f) for row in reader: #lookup the id for the code in the dictionary id = curr_dict[code]['id'] name = row['name'] address1 = row['address1'] address2 = row['address2'] city_id = getItemValue(row, 'city_id', default_city_id) # insert row to database table finally: f.close() I have the following questions: Is the code written in a Pythonic enough way (is there a better way of implementing it)? Given a table with a schema like shown below, how may I write a Python function that fetches data from the table and returns is in a dictionary indexed by string (name). How can I insert the row data into the table (actually I would like to use a transaction if possible, and commit just before the file is closed) Table schema: create table demo (id int, name varchar(32), weight float, city_id int); BTW, my backend database is postgreSQL

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temporary tables within stored procedures on slave servers with readonly set

- by lau

Hi, We have set up a replication scheme master/slave and we've had problems lately because some users wrote directly on the slave instead of the master, making the whole setup inconsistent. To prevent these problems from happening again, we've decided to remove the insert, delete, update, etc... rights from the users accessing the slave. Problems is that some stored procedure (for reading) require temporary tables. I read that changing the global variable read_only to true would do what I want and allow the stored procedures to work correctly ( http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/server-system-variables.html#sysvar_read_only ) but I keep getting the error : The MySQL server is running with the --read-only option so it cannot execute this statement (1290) The stored procedure that I used (for testing purpose) is this one : DELIMITER $$ DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS test_readonly $$ CREATE DEFINER=dbuser@% PROCEDURE test_readonly() BEGIN CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE IF NOT EXISTS temp ( BT_INDEX int(11), BT_DESC VARCHAR(10) ); INSERT INTO temp (BT_INDEX, BT_DESC) VALUES (222,'walou'), (111,'bidouille'); DROP TABLE temp; END $$ DELIMITER ; The create temporary table and the drop table work fine with the readonly flag - if I comment the INSERT line, it runs fine- but whenever I want to insert or delete from that temporary table, I get the error message. I use Mysql 5.1.29-rc. My default storage engine is InnoDB. Thanks in advance, this problem is really driving me crazy.

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Why aren't these Canvases rendering?

- by bpapa

I'm creating a web app that allows users to enter a number of colors, by specifying RGB values. Upon submission, the user will see a canvas with a solid rectangle drawn in the color chosen. On this page, I have 7 canvases. The first one draws just fine, but none of the rest show up. The browser is Safari. Here's the relevant code: First, the script element in the header, which defines the function I use to draw to the canvas. <script language="JavaScript" TYPE="text/javascript"> </script> Next, the HTML source, where I have my canvas tags and some embedded Javascript to call my drawCanvas function <canvas id="canvas0" width="100" height="100"> </canvas> <script language="JavaScript" TYPE="text/javascript"> </script> . . //more source . <canvas id="canvas1" width="100" height="100"> </canvas> <script language="JavaScript" TYPE="text/javascript"> </script> Also provided is a screenshot. As you can see, the "red" canvas comes up just fine, but the second one, which should be green, doesn't show up at all. Any ideas?

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how to apply group by on xslt elements

- by Amit

Hello All, I need to group the value based on some attribute and populate it. below mentioned is i/p xml and if you see there are 4 rows for Users and for id 2,4 Division is same i.e. HR while generating actual o/p I need to group by Division ... Any help ??? I/P XML <Users> <User id="2" name="ABC" Division="HR"/> <User id="3" name="xyz" Division="Admin"/> <User id="4" name="LMN" Division="Payroll"/> <User id="5" name="PQR" Division="HR"/> </Users> expected Result: I need to group the values based on Division and populate i.e. <AllUsers> <Division value="HR"> <User> <id>2</id> <name>ABC</name> </User> <User> <id>5</id> <name>PQR</name> </User> </Division> <Division value="ADMIN"> <User> <id>3</id> <name>XYZ</name> </User> </Division> <Division value="Payroll"> <User> <id>4</id> <name>LMN</name> </User> </Division> </AllUsers>

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Java: Ignoring escapes when parsing XML

- by Personman

I'm using a DocumentBuilder to parse XML files. However, the specification for the project requires that within text nodes, strings like " and < be returned literally, and not turned into the corresponding ASCII values. A previous similar question, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1979785/read-escaped-quote-as-escaped-quote-from-xml, received one answer that seems to be specific to Apache, and another that appears to simply not not do what it says it does. I'd love to be proven wrong on either count, however :) For reference, here is some code: file = new File(fileName); DocBderFac = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(); DocBder = DocBderFac.newDocumentBuilder(); doc = DocBder.parse(file); NodeList textElmntLst = doc.getElementsByTagName(text); Element textElmnt = (Element) textElmntLst.item(0); NodeList txts = textElmnt.getChildNodes(); String txt = ((Node) txts.item(0)).getNodeValue(); System.out.println(txt); I would like that println() to produce things like "3>2" instead of "3>2" which is what currently happens. Thanks!

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$_POST in php 5.3.5 does not work

- by naji

dear all iam working in php 5.3.5 this is the html file <html> <body> <form action="welcome.php" method="post"> Name: <input type="text" name="fname" /> Age: <input type="text" name="age" /> <input type="submit" /> </form> </body> </html> and this is the php file <html> <body> Welcome <?php echo $_POST["fname"]; ?>!<br /> You are <?php echo $_POST["age"]; ?> years old. </body> </html> the problem the values are not passed and the output like Welcome ! You are years old. But it has to be like this Welcome John! You are 28 years old. can any one help me please?? naji

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scanf a byte then print it out?

- by Sarah

I've searched around to see if I can find this answer but I can't seem to (please let me know if I'm wrong). I am trying to use scanf to read in a byte, an unsigned int and a char in one .c file and I am trying to access this byte in a different .c file and print it out. (I have already checked to make sure I have included all the appropriate parameters everywhere) But I keep getting errors. The warnings are: database.c: In function ‘addCitizen’: database.c:23:2: warning: format ‘%hhu’ expects argument of type ‘int’, but argument 2 has type ‘byte *’ [-Wformat] database.c:24:2: warning: format ‘%u’ expects argument of type ‘unsigned int’, but argument 2 has type ‘int *’ [-Wformat] database.c:25:2: warning: format ‘%c’ expects argument of type ‘int’, but argument 2 has type ‘char *’ [-Wformat] where I'm scanf'ing: // Request loop while (count-- != 0) { while (1){ // Get values from the user int error = scanf ("%79s %hhu %u %c", tname, &tdist, &tyear, &tgender); addCitizen(db, tname, &tdist, &tyear, &tgender); where I'm printing: void addCitizen(Database *db, char *tname, byte *tdist, int *tyear, char *tgender){ //needs to find the right place in memory to put this stuff and then put it there printf("\nName is: %79s\n", tname); printf("District is: %hhu\n", tdist); printf("Year of birth is: %u\n", tyear); printf("Gender is:%c\n", tgender); I'm not sure where I'm going wrong?

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Binding ComboBoxes to enums... in Silverlight!

- by Domenic

So, the web, and StackOverflow, have plenty of nice answers for how to bind a combobox to an enum property in WPF. But Silverlight is missing all of the features that make this possible :(. For example: You can't use a generic EnumDisplayer-style IValueConverter that accepts a type parameter, since Silverlight doesn't support x:Type. You can't use ObjectDataProvider, like in this approach, since it doesn't exist in Silverlight. You can't use a custom markup extension like in the comments on the link from #2, since markup extensions don't exist in Silverlight. You can't do a version of #1 using generics instead of Type properties of the object, since generics aren't supported in XAML (and the hacks to make them work all depend on markup extensions, not supported in Silverlight). Massive fail! As I see it, the only way to make this work is to either Cheat and bind to a string property in my ViewModel, whose setter/getter does the conversion, loading values into the ComboBox using code-behind in the View. Make a custom IValueConverter for every enum I want to bind to. Are there any alternatives that are more generic, i.e. don't involve writing the same code over and over for every enum I want? I suppose I could do solution #2 using a generic class accepting the enum as a type parameter, and then create new classes for every enum I want that are simply class MyEnumConverter : GenericEnumConverter<MyEnum> {} What are your thoughts, guys?

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Draw a comparison between an integer in a specific row and a count

- by XCoderX

This is a follow-up question to this one: Check for specific integer in a row WHERE user = $name I want a user to be able to comment on my site for exactly five times a day. After this five times, the user has to wait 24 hours. In order to accomplish that I raise a counter in my MYSQL database, right next to the user. So where the name of the user is, there is where the counter gets raised. When it reaches 5 it should stop counting and reset after 24 hours. In order to check the time I use a timestamp. I check if the timestamp is older than 24 hours. If that is the case, the counter gets reseted (-5) and the user can comment again. In order to do that, I use the following code, however it never stops at five, my guess is that my comparison is wrong somehow: $counter = "SELECT FROM table VALUES CommentCounterReset WHERE Name = '$name'"; if(!isset($_SESSION['ts'])); { $_SESSION['ts'] = time(); } if ($counter >= 5) { if (time() - $_SESSION['ts'] <= 60*60*24){ echo "You already wrote five comments."; } else { $sql = "UPDATE table SET CommentCounterReset = CommentCounterReset-5 WHERE Name = '$name'"; } } else { $sql = "UPDATE table SET CommentCounterReset = CommentCounterReset+1 WHERE Name = '$name'"; echo "Your comment has been added."; }

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A more condensed way of doing the following loop?

- by kylex

I have the following for-loop. It uses the values 0-6 form monday-sunday respectively. Is there a more condensed way to do this? As opposed to listing out the if ($i=="day") // $i = 0 is monday... $i = 6 is Sunday for($i=0;$i<7;$i++){ if ($i==0) echo ' <input name="repeat_on_week[]" type="checkbox" value="0" /> Monday'; if ($i==1) echo ' <input name="repeat_on_week[]" type="checkbox" value="1" /> Tuesday'; if ($i==2) echo ' <input name="repeat_on_week[]" type="checkbox" value="2" /> Wednesday'; if ($i==3) echo ' <input name="repeat_on_week[]" type="checkbox" value="3" /> Thursday'; if ($i==4) echo ' <input name="repeat_on_week[]" type="checkbox" value="4" /> Friday'; if ($i==5) echo ' <input name="repeat_on_week[]" type="checkbox" value="5" /> Saturday'; if ($i==6) echo ' <input name="repeat_on_week[]" type="checkbox" value="6" /> Sunday'; }

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Index an array expression directly in PostgreSQL

- by wich

I'm trying to insert data into a table from a template table. I need to rewrite one of the columns for which I wanted to use a directly indexed array expression, but I can't seem to find how to do this, if it is even possible. The scenario: create table template ( id integer, index integer, foo integer); insert into template values (0, 1, 23), (0, 2, 18), (0, 3, 16), (0, 4, 7), (1, 1, 17), (1, 2, 26), (1, 3, 11), (1, 4, 3); create table data ( data_id integer, foo integer); Now what I'd like to do is the following: insert into data select (array[3,7,5,2])[index], foo from template where id = 1; But this doesn't work, the (array[3,7,5,2])[index] syntax isn't valid. I tried a few variants, but was unable to get anything working and wasn't able to find the correct syntax in the docs, nor even whether this is at all possible or not. As a current workaround I've devised the following, but it is less than ideal, from an elegance perspective at least, but it may also be a performance hit, I haven't looked into that yet. insert into data select arr[index], foo from template, (select array[3,7,5,2] as arr) as q where id = 1; If anyone could suggest a (better) alternative to accomplish this I'd like to hear that as well.

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Using callback functions for error handling in C

- by Earlz

Hi, I have been thinking about the difficulty incurred with C error handling.. like who actually does if(printf("hello world")==-1){exit(1);} But you break common standards by not doing such verbose, and usually useless coding. Well what if you had a wrapper around the libc? like so you could do something like.. //main... error_catchall(my_errors); printf("hello world"); //this will automatically call my_errors on an error of printf ignore=1; //this makes it so the function will return like normal and we can check error values ourself if(fopen.... //we want to know if the file opened or not and handle it ourself. } int my_errors(){ if(ignore==0){ _exit(1); //exit if we aren't handling this error by flagging ignore } return 0; //this is called when there is an error anywhere in the libc } ... I am considering making such a wrapper as I am synthesizing my own BSD licensed libc(so I already have to touch the untouchable..), but I would like to know what people think about it.. would this actually work in real life and be more useful than returning -1?

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MySQL Paritioning performance

- by Imran Pathan

Measured performance on key partitioned tables and normal tables separately. But we couldn't find any performance improvement with partitioning. Queries are pruned. Using MySQL 5.1.47 on RHEL 4. Table details: UserUsage - Will have entries for user mobile number and data usage for each date. Mobile number and Date as PRI KEY. UserProfile - Queries prev table and stores summary for each mobile number. Mobile number PRI KEY. CREATE TABLE `UserUsage` ( `Msisdn` decimal(20,0) NOT NULL, `Date` date NOT NULL, . . PRIMARY KEY USING BTREE (`Msisdn`,`Date`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 PARTITION BY KEY(Msisdn) PARTITIONS 50; CREATE TABLE `UserProfile` ( `Msisdn` decimal(20,0) NOT NULL, . . PRIMARY KEY (`Msisdn`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 PARTITION BY KEY(Msisdn) PARTITIONS 50; Second table is updated by query select and order by date in first table in a perl program, query is select * from UserUsage where Msisdn=number order by Date desc limit 7 [Process data in perl] update UserProfile values(....) where Msisdn=number explain partition for select, shows row being scanned in a particular partition only. Is something wrong with partition design or queries as partitioning is taking almost same or more time compared to normal tables?

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What is best practice about having one-many hibernate

- by Patrick

Hi all, I believe this is a common scenario. Say I have a one-many mapping in hibernate Category has many Item Category: @OneToMany( cascade = {CascadeType.ALL},fetch = FetchType.LAZY) @JoinColumn(name="category_id") @Cascade( value = org.hibernate.annotations.CascadeType.DELETE_ORPHAN ) private List<Item> items; Item: @ManyToOne(targetEntity=Category.class,fetch=FetchType.EAGER) @JoinColumn(name="category_id",insertable=false,updatable=false) private Category category; All works fine. I use Category to fully control Item's life cycle. But, when I am writing code to update Category, first I get Category out from DB. Then pass it to UI. User fill in altered values for Category and pass back. Here comes the problem. Because I only pass around Category information not Item. Therefore the Item collection will be empty. When I call saveOrUpdate, it will clean out all associations. Any suggestion on what's best to address this? I think the advantage of having Category controls Item is to easily main the order of Item and not to confuse bi-directly. But what about situation that you do want to just update Category it self? Load it first and merge? Thank you.

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Session variables not getting set but only in Internet Explorer and not on all machines

- by gaoshan88

Logging into a site I'm working on functions as expected on my local machine but fails on the remote server but ONLY in Internet Explorer. The kicker is that it works in IE locally, just not on the remote machine. What in the world could cause this? I have stepped through the code on the remote machine and can see the entered login values being checked in the database, they are found and then a login function is called. This sets two $_SESSION variables and redirects to the main admin page. However, in IE only (and not when run on local machine... this is key) the $_SESSION variables are not present by the time you get to the main admin page. var_dump($_SESSION) gives me what I expect on every browser when I am running this in my local environment and in every browser except IE 6, 7 and 8 when run on the remote server (where I get a null value as if nothing has been set for $_SESSION). This really has me stumped so any advice is appreciated. For an example... in IE, run locally, var_dump gives me: array 'Username' => string 'theusername' length=11 'UserID' => string 'somevalue' length=9 Run on the remote server (IE only... works fine in other browsers) var_dump gives me: array(0){} Code: $User = GetUser($Username, $Password); if ($User->UserID <> "") { // this works so we call Login()... Login($User); // this also works and gives expected results. on to redirect... header("Location: index.php"); // a var_dump at index.php shows that there is no session data at all in IE, remotely. } else { header("Location: login.php"); } function Login($data) { $_SESSION['Username'] = $data->Username; $_SESSION['UserID'] = $data->UserID; // a var dump here gives the expected data in every browser }

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Reporting Services: Tablix RepeatColumnHeaders doesn't work on some reports

- by I Have the Hat

So I've got various reports that consist of a DataSet rendered in a Tablix... pretty garden variety stuff. There is a property for the Tablix control named RepeatColumnHeaders, which I have set to True for each report in question. The explanation for this property states “Indicates whether column headers are repeated on each page on which part of the data region appear.” Sounds pretty straightforward, but on some reports it works and on others it does not. I can't seem to find what's different about the reports that might affect this. On one report where the headers do repeat, there is some fairly arcane grouping mojo, but in an example where it doesn't work the Tablix only has one level--no grouping. I would expect the multi-nested one to be the problem, not the flat one. Maybe it's a different problem altogether. I threw together a simple Tablix rendering SELECT * FROM Foo, accepted all the default values, which results in RepeatColumnHeaders being set to False, and lo and behold the column headers do repeat for that report... Grrr. Any insights greatly appreciated.

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TicTacToe strategic reduction

- by NickLarsen

I decided to write a small program that solves TicTacToe in order to try out the effect of some pruning techniques on a trivial game. The full game tree using minimax to solve it only ends up with 549,946 possible games. With alpha-beta pruning, the number of states required to evaluate was reduced to 18,297. Then I applied a transposition table that brings the number down to 2,592. Now I want to see how low that number can go. The next enhancement I want to apply is a strategic reduction. The basic idea is to combine states that have equivalent strategic value. For instance, on the first move, if X plays first, there is nothing strategically different (assuming your opponent plays optimally) about choosing one corner instead of another. In the same situation, the same is true of the center of the walls of the board, and the center is also significant. By reducing to significant states only, you end up with only 3 states for evaluation on the first move instead of 9. This technique should be very useful since it prunes states near the top of the game tree. This idea came from the GameShrink method created by a group at CMU, only I am trying to avoid writing the general form, and just doing what is needed to apply the technique to TicTacToe. In order to achieve this, I modified my hash function (for the transposition table) to enumerate all strategically equivalent positions (using rotation and flipping functions), and to only return the lowest of the values for each board. Unfortunately now my program thinks X can force a win in 5 moves from an empty board when going first. After a long debugging session, it became apparent to me the program was always returning the move for the lowest strategically significant move (I store the last move in the transposition table as part of my state). Is there a better way I can go about adding this feature, or a simple method for determining the correct move applicable to the current situation with what I have already done?

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Getting the first of a GROUP BY clause in SQL

- by Michael Bleigh

I'm trying to implement single-column regionalization for a Rails application and I'm running into some major headaches with a complex SQL need. For this system, a region can be represented by a country code (e.g. us) a continent code that is uppercase (e.g. NA) or it can be NULL indicating the "default" information. I need to group these items by some relevant information such as a foreign key (we'll call it external_id). Given a country and its continent, I need to be able to select only the most specific region available. So if records exist with the country code, I select them. If, not I want a records with the continent code. If not that, I want records with a NULL code so I can receive the default values. So far I've figured that I may be able to use a generated CASE statement to get an arbitrary sort order. Something like this: SELECT *, CASE region WHEN 'us' THEN 1 WHEN 'NA' THEN 2 ELSE 3 END AS region_sort FROM my_table WHERE region IN ('us','NA') OR region IS NULL GROUP BY external_id ORDER BY region_sort The problem is that without an aggregate function the actual data returned by the GROUP BY for a given row seems to be untameable. How can I massage this query to make it return only the first record of the region_sort ordered groups?

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ASP.NET Show/Hide Sections in a Datagrid row.

- by ViperMAN

Hi All, I have a datagrid where each row has information on Employees in a company. I would like to allow each row the ability to show/hide extra information. My first idea was use the CollapsiblePanelExtender from the AJAX toolkit and have each row like this: <ajaxtoolkit:collapsiblepanelextender TargetControlID="panel2"> ExpandControlID="LinkButton1" CollapseControlID="LinkButton1"> </ajaxtoolkit:collapsiblepanelextender> <asp:panel> FirstName | LastName | Phone | Email <LinkButton1> <- this hides/show extra info in panel2 </asp:panel> <asp:panel2> <textbox ="FirstName"> <textbox ="LastName"> <textbox ="EmailName"> ... ...lots of textboxes where information is assigned from the database. </asp:panel2> This works very well but it can be computationally expensive. The extra information panel has a lot of textboxes/labels, all of which gets its values from the database. Everytime the page loads all the data is got from the database at the start, some of it is hidden. Is there a better way to achieve my goal? Or is there a way to only load an employees extra details when the Show/Hide button is click? Thanks in advance!

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