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  • SQL SERVER – Introduction to Rollup Clause

    - by pinaldave
    In this article we will go over basic understanding of Rollup clause in SQL Server. ROLLUP clause is used to do aggregate operation on multiple levels in hierarchy. Let us understand how it works by using an example. Consider a table with the following structure and data: CREATE TABLE tblPopulation ( Country VARCHAR(100), [State] VARCHAR(100), City VARCHAR(100), [Population (in Millions)] INT ) GO INSERT INTO tblPopulation VALUES('India', 'Delhi','East Delhi',9 [...]

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  • It’s time that you ought to know what you don’t know

    - by fatherjack
    There is a famous quote about unknown unknowns and known knowns and so on but I’ll let you review that if you are interested. What I am worried about is that there are things going on in your environment that you ought to know about, indeed you have asked to be told about but you are not getting the information. When you schedule a SQL Agent job you can set it to send an email to an inbox monitored by someone who needs to know and indeed can do something about it. However, what happens if the email process isnt successful? Check your servers with this: USE [msdb] GO /* This code selects the top 10 most recent SQLAgent jobs that failed to complete successfully and where the email notification failed too. Jonathan Allen Jul 2012 */ DECLARE @Date DATETIME SELECT @Date = DATEADD(d, DATEDIFF(d, '19000101', GETDATE()) - 1, '19000101') SELECT TOP 10 [s].[name] , [sjh].[step_name] , [sjh].[sql_message_id] , [sjh].[sql_severity] , [sjh].[message] , [sjh].[run_date] , [sjh].[run_time] , [sjh].[run_duration] , [sjh].[operator_id_emailed] , [sjh].[operator_id_netsent] , [sjh].[operator_id_paged] , [sjh].[retries_attempted] FROM [dbo].[sysjobhistory] AS sjh INNER JOIN [dbo].[sysjobs] AS s ON [sjh].[job_id] = [s].[job_id] WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM [dbo].[sysjobs] AS s INNER JOIN [dbo].[sysjobhistory] AS s2 ON [s].[job_id] = [s2].[job_id] WHERE [sjh].[job_id] = [s2].[job_id] AND [s2].[message] LIKE '%failed to notify%' AND CONVERT(DATETIME, CONVERT(VARCHAR(15), [s2].[run_date])) >= @date AND [s2].[run_status] = 0 ) AND sjh.[run_status] = 0 AND sjh.[step_id] != 0 AND CONVERT(DATETIME, CONVERT(VARCHAR(15), [run_date])) >= @date ORDER BY [sjh].[run_date] DESC , [sjh].[run_time] DESC go USE [msdb] go /* This code summarises details of SQLAgent jobs that failed to complete successfully and where the email notification failed too. Jonathan Allen Jul 2012 */ DECLARE @Date DATETIME SELECT @Date = DATEADD(d, DATEDIFF(d, '19000101', GETDATE()) - 1, '19000101') SELECT [s].name , [s2].[step_id] , CONVERT(DATETIME, CONVERT(VARCHAR(15), [s2].[run_date])) AS [rundate] , COUNT(*) AS [execution count] FROM [dbo].[sysjobs] AS s INNER JOIN [dbo].[sysjobhistory] AS s2 ON [s].[job_id] = [s2].[job_id] WHERE [s2].[message] LIKE '%failed to notify%' AND CONVERT(DATETIME, CONVERT(VARCHAR(15), [s2].[run_date])) >= @date AND [s2].[run_status] = 0 GROUP BY name , [s2].[step_id] , [s2].[run_date] ORDER BY [s2].[run_dateDESC] These two result sets will show if there are any SQL Agent jobs that have run on your servers that failed and failed to successfully email about the failure. I hope it’s of use to you. Disclaimer – Jonathan is a Friend of Red Gate and as such, whenever they are discussed, will have a generally positive disposition towards Red Gate tools. Other tools are often available and you should always try others before you come back and buy the Red Gate ones. All code in this blog is provided “as is” and no guarantee, warranty or accuracy is applicable or inferred, run the code on a test server and be sure to understand it before you run it on a server that means a lot to you or your manager.

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  • Tip #104: Did you know … How to view text for the ‘hint’ buttons on the Publish Web Dialog?

    - by The Official Microsoft IIS Site
    After the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio 2010, the Publish Web Dialog was modified to include two information buttons associated with the Service URL and Site/application text boxes. (See Figure 1) Figure 1 – New information (‘hint’) buttons (see circled question marks) There are two keys to remember when trying to view the ‘help’ text associated with these buttons: Patience Hover – don’t click In order to reveal the valuable information that these help icons can unlock, simply move your mouse to...(read more)

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  • Change or Reset Windows Password from a Ubuntu Live CD

    - by Trevor Bekolay
    If you can’t log in even after trying your twelve passwords, or you’ve inherited a computer complete with password-protected profiles, worry not – you don’t have to do a fresh install of Windows. We’ll show you how to change or reset your Windows password from a Ubuntu Live CD. This method works for all of the NT-based version of Windows – anything from Windows 2000 and later, basically. And yes, that includes Windows 7. You’ll need a Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD, or a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 Flash Drive. If you don’t have one, or have forgotten how to boot from the flash drive, check out our article on creating a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 flash drive. The program that lets us manipulate Windows passwords is called chntpw. The steps to install it are different in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu. Installation: 32-bit Open up Synaptic Package Manager by clicking on System at the top of the screen, expanding the Administration section, and clicking on Synaptic Package Manager. chntpw is found in the universe repository. Repositories are a way for Ubuntu to group software together so that users are able to choose if they want to use only completely open source software maintained by Ubuntu developers, or branch out and use software with different licenses and maintainers. To enable software from the universe repository, click on Settings > Repositories in the Synaptic window. Add a checkmark beside the box labeled “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)” and then click close. When you change the repositories you are selecting software from, you have to reload the list of available software. In the main Synaptic window, click on the Reload button. The software lists will be downloaded. Once downloaded, Synaptic must rebuild its search index. The label over the text field by the Search button will read “Rebuilding search index.” When it reads “Quick search,” type chntpw in the text field. The package will show up in the list. Click on the checkbox near the chntpw name. Click on Mark for Installation. chntpw won’t actually be installed until you apply the changes you’ve made, so click on the Apply button in the Synaptic window now. You will be prompted to accept the changes. Click Apply. The changes should be applied quickly. When they’re done, click Close. chntpw is now installed! You can close Synaptic Package Manager. Skip to the section titled Using chntpw to reset your password. Installation: 64-bit The version of chntpw available in Ubuntu’s universe repository will not work properly on a 64-bit machine. Fortunately, a patched version exists in Debian’s Unstable branch, so let’s download it from there and install it manually. Open Firefox. Whether it’s your preferred browser or not, it’s very readily accessible in the Ubuntu Live CD environment, so it will be the easiest to use. There’s a shortcut to Firefox in the top panel. Navigate to http://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/chntpw/download and download the latest version of chntpw for 64-bit machines. Note: In most cases it would be best to add the Debian Unstable branch to a package manager, but since the Live CD environment will revert to its original state once you reboot, it’ll be faster to just download the .deb file. Save the .deb file to the default location. You can close Firefox if desired. Open a terminal window by clicking on Applications at the top-left of the screen, expanding the Accessories folder, and clicking on Terminal. In the terminal window, enter the following text, hitting enter after each line: cd Downloadssudo dpkg –i chntpw* chntpw will now be installed. Using chntpw to reset your password Before running chntpw, you will have to mount the hard drive that contains your Windows installation. In most cases, Ubuntu 9.10 makes this simple. Click on Places at the top-left of the screen. If your Windows drive is easily identifiable – usually by its size – then left click on it. If it is not obvious, then click on Computer and check out each hard drive until you find the correct one. The correct hard drive will have the WINDOWS folder in it. When you find it, make a note of the drive’s label that appears in the menu bar of the file browser. If you don’t already have one open, start a terminal window by going to Applications > Accessories > Terminal. In the terminal window, enter the commands cd /medials pressing enter after each line. You should see one or more strings of text appear; one of those strings should correspond with the string that appeared in the title bar of the file browser earlier. Change to that directory by entering the command cd <hard drive label> Since the hard drive label will be very annoying to type in, you can use a shortcut by typing in the first few letters or numbers of the drive label (capitalization matters) and pressing the Tab key. It will automatically complete the rest of the string (if those first few letters or numbers are unique). We want to switch to a certain Windows directory. Enter the command: cd WINDOWS/system32/config/ Again, you can use tab-completion to speed up entering this command. To change or reset the administrator password, enter: sudo chntpw SAM SAM is the file that contains your Windows registry. You will see some text appear, including a list of all of the users on your system. At the bottom of the terminal window, you should see a prompt that begins with “User Edit Menu:” and offers four choices. We recommend that you clear the password to blank (you can always set a new password in Windows once you log in). To do this, enter “1” and then “y” to confirm. If you would like to change the password instead, enter “2”, then your desired password, and finally “y” to confirm. If you would like to reset or change the password of a user other than the administrator, enter: sudo chntpw –u <username> SAM From here, you can follow the same steps as before: enter “1” to reset the password to blank, or “2” to change it to a value you provide. And that’s it! Conclusion chntpw is a very useful utility provided for free by the open source community. It may make you think twice about how secure the Windows login system is, but knowing how to use chntpw can save your tail if your memory fails you two or eight times! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDChange Your Forgotten Windows Password with the Linux System Rescue CDHow to Create and Use a Password Reset Disk in Windows Vista & Windows 7Reset Your Forgotten Password the Easy Way Using the Ultimate Boot CD for WindowsHow to install Spotify in Ubuntu 9.10 using Wine TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC Live Map of Marine Traffic NoSquint Remembers Site Specific Zoom Levels (Firefox) New Firefox release 3.6.3 fixes 1 Critical bug Dark Side of the Moon (8-bit)

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  • SSIS - XML Source Script

    - by simonsabin
    The XML Source in SSIS is great if you have a 1 to 1 mapping between entity and table. You can do more complex mapping but it becomes very messy and won't perform. What other options do you have? The challenge with XML processing is to not need a huge amount of memory. I remember using the early versions of Biztalk with loaded the whole document into memory to map from one document type to another. This was fine for small documents but was an absolute killer for large documents. You therefore need a streaming approach. For flexibility however you want to be able to generate your rows easily, and if you've ever used the XmlReader you will know its ugly code to write. That brings me on to LINQ. The is an implementation of LINQ over XML which is really nice. You can write nice LINQ queries instead of the XMLReader stuff. The downside is that by default LINQ to XML requires a whole XML document to work with. No streaming. Your code would look like this. We create an XDocument and then enumerate over a set of annoymous types we generate from our LINQ statement XDocument x = XDocument.Load("C:\\TEMP\\CustomerOrders-Attribute.xml");   foreach (var xdata in (from customer in x.Elements("OrderInterface").Elements("Customer")                        from order in customer.Elements("Orders").Elements("Order")                        select new { Account = customer.Attribute("AccountNumber").Value                                   , OrderDate = order.Attribute("OrderDate").Value }                        )) {     Output0Buffer.AddRow();     Output0Buffer.AccountNumber = xdata.Account;     Output0Buffer.OrderDate = Convert.ToDateTime(xdata.OrderDate); } As I said the downside to this is that you are loading the whole document into memory. I did some googling and came across some helpful videos from a nice UK DPE Mike Taulty http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/screencasts/screencast/289/LINQ-to-XML-Streaming-In-Large-Documents.aspx. Which show you how you can combine LINQ and the XmlReader to get a semi streaming approach. I took what he did and implemented it in SSIS. What I found odd was that when I ran it I got different numbers between using the streamed and non streamed versions. I found the cause was a little bug in Mikes code that causes the pointer in the XmlReader to progress past the start of the element and thus foreach (var xdata in (from customer in StreamReader("C:\\TEMP\\CustomerOrders-Attribute.xml","Customer")                                from order in customer.Elements("Orders").Elements("Order")                                select new { Account = customer.Attribute("AccountNumber").Value                                           , OrderDate = order.Attribute("OrderDate").Value }                                ))         {             Output0Buffer.AddRow();             Output0Buffer.AccountNumber = xdata.Account;             Output0Buffer.OrderDate = Convert.ToDateTime(xdata.OrderDate);         } These look very similiar and they are the key element is the method we are calling, StreamReader. This method is what gives us streaming, what it does is return a enumerable list of elements, because of the way that LINQ works this results in the data being streamed in. static IEnumerable<XElement> StreamReader(String filename, string elementName) {     using (XmlReader xr = XmlReader.Create(filename))     {         xr.MoveToContent();         while (xr.Read()) //Reads the first element         {             while (xr.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element && xr.Name == elementName)             {                 XElement node = (XElement)XElement.ReadFrom(xr);                   yield return node;             }         }         xr.Close();     } } This code is specifically designed to return a list of the elements with a specific name. The first Read reads the root element and then the inner while loop checks to see if the current element is the type we want. If not we do the xr.Read() again until we find the element type we want. We then use the neat function XElement.ReadFrom to read an element and all its sub elements into an XElement. This is what is returned and can be consumed by the LINQ statement. Essentially once one element has been read we need to check if we are still on the same element type and name (the inner loop) This was Mikes mistake, if we called .Read again we would advance the XmlReader beyond the start of the Element and so the ReadFrom method wouldn't work. So with the code above you can use what ever LINQ statement you like to flatten your XML into the rowsets you want. You could even have multiple outputs and generate your own surrogate keys.        

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  • SQLAuthority News – Download Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0 CTP 1

    - by pinaldave
    Download the SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0 CTP, a Type 4 JDBC driver that provides database connectivity through the standard JDBC application program interfaces (APIs) available in Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5. In its continued commitment to interoperability, Microsoft has released a preview of the upcoming Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) driver. The SQL Server JDBC Driver [...]

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  • My ASP.NET news sources

    - by Jon Galloway
    I just posted about the ASP.NET Daily Community Spotlight. I was going to list a bunch of my news sources at the end, but figured this deserves a separate post. I've been following a lot of development blogs for a long time - for a while I subscribed to over 1500 feeds and read them all. That doesn't scale very well, though, and it's really time consuming. Since the community spotlight requires an interesting ASP.NET post every day of the year, I've come up with a few sources of ASP.NET news. Top Link Blogs Chris Alcock's The Morning Brew is a must-read blog which highlights each day's best blog posts across the .NET community. He covers the entire Microsoft development, but generally any of the top ASP.NET posts I see either have already been listed on The Morning Brew or will be there soon. Elijah Manor posts a lot of great content, which is available in his Twitter feed at @elijahmanor, on his Delicious feed, and on a dedicated website - Web Dev Tweets. While not 100% ASP.NET focused, I've been appreciating Joe Stagner's Weekly Links series, partly since he includes a lot of links that don't show up on my other lists. Twitter Over the past few years, I've been getting more and more of my information from my Twitter network (as opposed to RSS or other means). Twitter is as good as your network, so if getting good information off Twitter sounds crazy, you're probably not following the right people. I already mentioned Elijah Manor (@elijahmanor). I follow over a thousand people on Twitter, so I'm not going to try to pick and choose a list, but one good way to get started building out a Twitter network is to follow active Twitter users on the ASP.NET team at Microsoft: @scottgu (well, not on the ASP.NET team, but their great grand boss, and always a great source of ASP.NET info) @shanselman @haacked @bradwilson @davidfowl @InfinitiesLoop @davidebbo @marcind @DamianEdwards @stevensanderson @bleroy @humancompiler @osbornm @anurse I'm sure I'm missing a few, and I'll update the list. Building a Twitter network that follows topics you're interested in allows you to use other tools like Cadmus to automatically summarize top content by leveraging the collective input of many users. Twitter Search with Topsy You can search Twitter for hashtags (like #aspnet, #aspnetmvc, and #webmatrix) to get a raw view of what people are talking about on Twitter. Twitter's search is pretty poor; I prefer Topsy. Here's an example search for the #aspnetmvc hashtag: http://topsy.com/s?q=%23aspnetmvc You can also do combined queries for several tags: http://topsy.com/s?q=%23aspnetmvc+OR+%23aspnet+OR+%23webmatrix Paper.li Paper.li is a handy service that builds a custom daily newspaper based on your social network. They've turned a lot of people off by automatically tweeting "The SuperDevFoo Daily is out!!!" messages (which can be turned off), but if you're ignoring them because of those message, you're missing out on a handy, free service. My paper.li page includes content across a lot of interests, including ASP.NET: http://paper.li/jongalloway When I want to drill into a specific tag, though, I'll just look at the Paper.li post for that hashtag. For example, here's the #aspnetmvc paper.li page: http://paper.li/tag/aspnetmvc Delicious I mentioned previously that I use Delicious for managing site links. I also use their network and search features. The tag based search is pretty good: Even better, though, is that I can see who's bookmarked these links, and add them to my Delicious network. After having built out a network, I can optimize by doing less searching and more leaching leveraging of collective intelligence. Community Sites I scan DotNetKicks, the weblogs.asp.net combined feed, and the ASP.NET Community page, CodeBetter, Los Techies,  CodeProject,  and DotNetSlackers from time to time. They're hit and miss, but they do offer more of an opportunity for finding original content which others may have missed. Terms of Enrampagement When someone's on a tear, I just manually check their sites more often. I could use RSS for that, but it changes pretty often. I just keep a mental note of people who are cranking out a lot of good content and check their sites more often. What works for you?

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  • SQLAuthority News – SQL SERVER 2008 R2 Pricing

    - by pinaldave
    I was recently asked question about SQL Server 2008 pricing. I have bookmarked official site here which lists the pricing. Official site: What’s New in SQL Server 2008 R2 Editions Editions Per Processor PricingRetail Per Server Plus CAL PricingRetail Parallel Data Warehouse $57,498 Not offered via Server CAL Datacenter $57,498 Not offered via Server CAL Enterprise $28,749 $13,969 with 25 CALs Standard $7,499 $1,849 with 5 CALs However, I have [...]

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  • Coding standards

    - by Piotr Rodak
    This post will be about coding standards. There are countless articles and blog posts related to this topic, so I know this post will not be too revealing. Yet I would like to mention a few things I came across during my work with the T-SQL code. Naming convention - there are many of them obviously. Too bad if all of them are used in the same database, and sometimes even in the same stored procedure. It is not uncommon to see something like create procedure dbo . Proc1 ( @ParamId int ) as begin declare...(read more)

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  • SQL Server service accounts and SPNs

    - by simonsabin
    Service Principal Names (SPNs) are a must for kerberos authentication which is a must when using sharepoint, reporting services and sql server where you access one server that then needs to access another resource, this is called the double hop. The reason this is a complex problem is that the second hop has to be done with impersonation/delegation. For this to work there needs to be a way for the security system to make sure that the service in the middle is allowed to impersonate you, after all you are not giving the service your password. To do this you need to be using kerberos. The following is my simple interpretation of how kerberos works. I find the Kerberos documentation rediculously complex so the following might be sligthly wrong but I think its close enough. Keberos works on a ticketing system, the prinicipal is that you get a security token from AD and then you can pass that to the service in the middle which can then use that token to impersonate you. For that to work AD has to be able to identify who is allowed to use the token, in this case the service account.But how do you as a client know what service account the service in the middle is configured with. The answer is SPNs. The SPN is the mapping between your logical connection to the service account. One type of SPN is for the DNS name for the server and the port. i.e. MySQL.mydomain.com and 1433. You can see how this maps to SQL Server on that server, but how does it map to the account. Well it can be done in two ways, either you can have a mapping defined in AD or AD can use a default mapping (this is something I didn't know about). To map the SPN in AD then you have to add the SPN to the user account, this is documented in the first link below either directly or using a tool called SetSPN. You might say that is complex, well it is and thats why SQL Server tries to do it for you, at start up it tries to connect to AD and set the SPN on the account it is running as, clearly that can only happen IF SQL is running as a domain account AND importantly it has permission to do so. By default a normal domain user account doesn't have the correct permission, and is why so many people have this problem. If the account is a domain admin then it will have permission, but non of us run SQL using domain admin accounts do we. You might also note that the SPN contains the port number (this isn't a requirement now in sql 2008 but I won't go into that), so if you set it manually and you are using dynamic ports (the default for a named instance) what do you do, well every time the port changes you need to change the SPN allocated to the account. Thats why its advised to let SQL Server register the SPN itself. You may also have thought, well what happens if I change my service account, won't that lead to two accounts with the same SPN. Possibly. Having two accounts with the same SPN is definitely a problem. Why? Well because if there are two accounts Kerberos can't identify the exact account that the service is running as, it could be either account, and so your security falls back to NTLM. SETSPN is useful for finding duplicate SPNs Reading this you will probably be thinking Oh my goodness this is really difficult. It is however I've found today in investigating something else that there is an easy option. Use Network Service as your service account. Network Service is a special account and is tied to the computer. It appears that Network Service has the update rights to AD to set an SPN mapping for the computer account. This then allows the SPN mapping to work. I believe this also works for the local system account. To get all the SPNs in your AD run the following, it could be a large file, so you might want to restrict it to a specific OU, or CN ldifde -d "DC=<domain>" -l servicePrincipalName -F spn.txt You will read in the links below that you need SQL to register the SPN this is done how to use Kerberos authenticaiton in SQL Server - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319723 Using Kerberos with SQL Server - http://blogs.msdn.com/sql_protocols/archive/2005/10/12/479871.aspx Understanding Kerberos and NTLM authentication in SQL Server Connections - http://blogs.msdn.com/sql_protocols/archive/2006/12/02/understanding-kerberos-and-ntlm-authentication-in-sql-server-connections.aspx Summary The only reason I personally know to use a domain account is when you can't get kerberos to work and you want to do BULK INSERT or other network service that requires access to a a remote server. In this case you have to resort to using SQL authentication and the SQL Server uses its service account to access the remote service, and thus you need a domain account. You migth need this if using some forms of replication. I've always found Kerberos awkward to setup and so fallen back to this domain account approach. So in summary to get Kerberos to work try using the network service or local system accounts. For a great post from the Adam Saxton of the SQL Server support team go to http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/archive/2010/03/09/what-spn-do-i-use-and-how-does-it-get-there.aspx 

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  • Tamilnadu HSC (+2) exam results – List of Websites

    - by samsudeen
    Tamilnadu State Board HSC ( +2 ) exam  results is expected to be release around the mid of this month ( probably on May 19). School students can get their marks at the same time from their respective schools. The results are usually published on websites or can availed from  mobile phone service providers through SMS. But it is for sure  most the sites will not be accessed for at least couple hours at the  time of result announcement Below are some of the quality web sites ( includes mirror sites to directly access the results page) that publishes the result links. http://www.tnresults.nic.in/ http://www.squarebrothers.com/ http://results.sify.com/ http://indiaresults.com/ http://www.dge1.tn.nic.in/ http://www.dge2.tn.nic.in/ http://www.dge3.tn.nic.in/ http://www.tngdc.in/ http://www.collegesintamilnadu.com/ http://www.classontheweb.com/ http://www.schools9.com/ http://www.chennaivision.com/ http://www.mygaruda.com/ http://www.tnagar.com/ http://www.indiacollegefinder.com/ http://www.chennaionline.com/ http://www.nakkeeran.com/ http://www.getyourscore.in/ http://www.examresults.net/ http://results.webdunia.com/ http://www.jayanews.in/ http://www.findchennai.com/ Join us on Facebook to read all our stories right inside your Facebook news feed.

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  • SQLAuthority Book Review – Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting

    - by pinaldave
    Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting by Christian Bolton, Justin Langford, Brent Ozar, James Rowland-Jones, Steven Wort Link to Amazon (Worldwide) Link to Flipkart (India) Brief Review: Having a book on internal and associating that with real life is “almost” an impossible task. The reason for using the word “almost” is because this book has accomplished this [...]

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  • Free SQL Server training? Now you’re talking.

    - by Fatherjack
    SQL Server user groups are everywhere, literally all over the globe there are SQL Server professionals meeting on a regular basis, sharing ideas, solving problems, learning about how to do new stuff and new ways to do old stuff and it’s all for free. I don’t have detailed figures but of all the SQL Server professionals there are only a small number of them attend these user groups. Those people are the people that are taking the time and making then effort to make themselves better at their chosen trade, more employable and having a good time. For free. I don’t know why but there are many people that don’t seem to want to be the best they can be. Some of you enlightened people that do already attend could be doing more though. Have you ever spoken at  your group? Not just in the break while you have a mouthful of pizza and a drink in your hand but had the attention of the whole group listen to you speak. It doesn’t need to be a full hour, it doesn’t need to be some obscure deeply technical demonstration of SQL Server internals, just a few minutes on something that you do that might help other people with their daily work. A neat process that helps you get from Problem A to Solution B. There is no need to get concerned that becoming a speaker means that you suddenly have to know more than anyone else in the room. This is you talking about something that you experienced. What you did, what you would repeat, what you might do differently next time. No one in the audience can pick you up on a technicality. If someone comes out with a great idea that you hadn’t thought of, say “That’s a great idea, I didn’t think of that while we had the problem on our hands. I’ll try to remember that for next time”. If someone is looking to show you up for picking the wrong decision (and this, in my experience, is very uncommon indeed) then you simply give a reply like “Well, at the time we chose that option. Perhaps another time then we would tackle things differently but we were happy with how our solution worked”. It’s sharing things like this that makes user groups have a real value, talking about how you coped with or averted a disaster, a handy little section of code or using a tool in a particular way that you take for granted that might, just might, be something that other people haven’t thought of that solves a problem or saves some time for them. At the next meeting you might get the same benefit from a different person and so it goes on. As individuals benefits so the community benefits. For free. Things I encourage you to do; If you are a chapter or user group leader; encourage someone from your group who has never spoken before to start speaking. If you are a chapter or user group attendee that hasn’t spoken before; speak for at least 5 minutes on something related to SQL Server at any group meeting. If you don’t currently attend a user group; please go along to you nearest one when they are meeting next and invest in yourself and your future. UK user group details are here: http://sqlsouthwest.co.uk/national_ug.htm , PASS chapters outside the UK are found via http://www.sqlpass.org/PASSChapters/LocalChapters.aspx. If you are unsure of how you might achieve any of these things then get in touch with me*, I’ll give you specific advice on getting started on any of the above points and help you prove to yourself what you are capable of. SQL Community – be part of it and make it better. Let me know how you get on in the comments.

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  • The penultimate audit trigger framework

    - by Piotr Rodak
    So, it’s time to see what I came up with after some time of playing with COLUMNS_UPDATED() and bitmasks. The first part of this miniseries describes the mechanics of the encoding which columns are updated within DML operation. The task I was faced with was to prepare an audit framework that will be fairly easy to use. The audited tables were to be the ones directly modified by user applications, not the ones heavily used by batch or ETL processes. The framework consists of several tables and procedures...(read more)

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  • Ingredient Substitutes while Baking

    - by Rekha
    In our normal cooking, we substitute the vegetables for the gravies we prepare. When we start baking, we look for a good recipe. At least one or two ingredient will be missing. We do not know where to substitute what to bring same output. So we finally drop the plan of baking. Again after a month, we get the interest in baking. Again one or two lack of ingredient and that’s it. We keep on doing this for months. When I was going through the cooking blogs, I came across a site with the Ingredient Substitutes for Baking: (*) is to indicate that this substitution is ideal from personal experience. Flour Substitutes ( For 1 cup of Flour) All Purpose Flour 1/2 cup white cake flour plus 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 1 cup self-rising flour (omit using salt and baking powder if the recipe calls for it since self raising flour has it already) 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour 1/2 cup (75 grams) whole wheat flour 7/8 cup (130 grams) rice flour (starch) (do not replace all of the flour with the rice flour) 7/8 cup whole wheat Bread Flour 1 cup all purpose flour 1 cup all purpose flour plus 1 teaspoon wheat gluten (*) Cake Flour Place 2 tbsp cornstarch in 1 cup and fill the rest up with All Purpose flour (*) 1 cup all purpose flour minus 2 tablespoons Pastry flour Place 2 tbsp cornstarch in 1 cup and fill the rest up with All Purpose flour Equal parts of All purpose flour plus cake flour (*) Self-rising Flour 1½ teaspoons of baking powder plus ½ teaspoon of salt plus 1 cup of all-purpose flour. Cornstarch (1 tbsp) 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon arrowroot 4 teaspoons quick-cooking tapioca 1 tablespoon potato starch or rice starch or flour Tapioca (1 tbsp) 1 – 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour Cornmeal (stone ground) polenta OR corn flour (gives baked goods a lighter texture) if using cornmeal for breading,crush corn chips in a blender until they have the consistency of cornmeal. maize meal Corn grits Sweeteners ( for Every 1 cup ) * * (HV) denotes Healthy Version for low fat or fat free substitution in Baking Light Brown Sugar 2 tablespoons molasses plus 1 cup of white sugar Dark Brown Sugar 3 tablespoons molasses plus 1 cup of white sugar Confectioner’s/Powdered Sugar Process 1 cup sugar plus 1 tablespoon cornstarch Corn Syrup 1 cup sugar plus 1/4 cup water 1 cup Golden Syrup 1 cup honey (may be little sweeter) 1 cup molasses Golden Syrup Combine two parts light corn syrup plus one part molasses 1/2 cup honey plus 1/2 cup corn syrup 1 cup maple syrup 1 cup corn syrup Honey 1- 1/4 cups sugar plus 1/4 cup water 3/4 cup maple syrup plus 1/2 cup granulated sugar 3/4 cup corn syrup plus 1/2 cup granulated sugar 3/4 cup light molasses plus 1/2 cup granulated white sugar 1 1/4 cups granulated white or brown sugar plus 1/4 cup additional liquid in recipe plus 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar Maple Syrup 1 cup honey,thinned with water or fruit juice like apple 3/4 cup corn syrup plus 1/4 cup butter 1 cup Brown Rice Syrup 1 cup Brown sugar (in case of cereals) 1 cup light molasses (on pancakes, cereals etc) 1 cup granulated sugar for every 3/4 cup of maple syrup and increase liquid in the recipe by 3 tbsp for every cup of sugar.If baking soda is used, decrease the amount by 1/4 teaspoon per cup of sugar substituted, since sugar is less acidic than maple syrup Molasses 1 cup honey 1 cup dark corn syrup 1 cup maple syrup 3/4 cup brown sugar warmed and dissolved in 1/4 cup of liquid ( use this if taste of molasses is important in the baked good) Cocoa Powder (Natural, Unsweetened) 3 tablespoons (20 grams) Dutch-processed cocoa plus 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar, lemon juice or white vinegar 1 ounce (30 grams) unsweetened chocolate (reduce fat in recipe by 1 tablespoon) 3 tablespoons (20 grams) carob powder Semisweet baking chocolate (1 oz) 1 oz unsweetened baking chocolate plus 1 Tbsp sugar Unsweetened baking chocolate (1 oz ) 3 Tbsp baking cocoa plus 1 Tbsp vegetable oil or melted shortening or margarine Semisweet chocolate chips (1 cup) 6 oz semisweet baking chocolate, chopped (Alternatively) For 1 cup of Semi sweet chocolate chips you can use : 6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, 7 tablespoons sugar ,1/4 cup fat (butter or oil) Leaveners and Diary * * (HV) denotes Healthy Version for low fat or fat free substitution in Baking Compressed Yeast (1 cake) 1 envelope or 2 teaspoons active dry yeast 1 packet (1/4 ounce) Active Dry yeast 1 cake fresh compressed yeast 1 tablespoon fast-rising active yeast Baking Powder (1 tsp) 1/3 teaspoon baking soda plus 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar 1/2 teaspoon baking soda plus 1/2 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt 1/4 teaspoon baking soda plus 1/3 cup molasses. When using the substitutions that include liquid, reduce other liquid in recipe accordingly Baking Soda(1 tsp) 3 tsp Baking Powder ( and reduce the acidic ingredients in the recipe. Ex Instead of buttermilk add milk) 1 tsp potassium bicarbonate Ideal substitution – 2 tsp Baking powder and omit salt in recipe Cream of tartar (1 tsp) 1 teaspoon white vinegar 1 tsp lemon juice Notes from What’s Cooking America – If cream of tartar is used along with baking soda in a cake or cookie recipe, omit both and use baking powder instead. If it calls for baking soda and cream of tarter, just use baking powder.Normally, when cream of tartar is used in a cookie, it is used together with baking soda. The two of them combined work like double-acting baking powder. When substituting for cream of tartar, you must also substitute for the baking soda. If your recipe calls for baking soda and cream of tarter, just use baking powder. One teaspoon baking powder is equivalent to 1/4 teaspoon baking soda plus 5/8 teaspoon cream of tartar. If there is additional baking soda that does not fit into the equation, simply add it to the batter. Buttermilk (1 cup) 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar (white or cider) plus enough milk to make 1 cup (let stand 5-10 minutes) 1 cup plain or low fat yogurt 1 cup sour cream 1 cup water plus 1/4 cup buttermilk powder 1 cup milk plus 1 1/2 – 1 3/4 teaspoons cream of tartar Plain Yogurt (1 cup) 1 cup sour cream 1 cup buttermilk 1 cup crème fraiche 1 cup heavy whipping cream (35% butterfat) plus 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice Whole Milk (1 cup) 1 cup fat free milk plus 1 tbsp unsaturated Oil like canola (HV) 1 cup low fat milk (HV) Heavy Cream (1 cup) 3/4 cup milk plus 1/3 cup melted butter.(whipping wont work) Sour Cream (1 cup) (pls refer also Substitutes for Fats in Baking below) 7/8 cup buttermilk or sour milk plus 3 tablespoons butter. 1 cup thickened yogurt plus 1 teaspoon baking soda. 3/4 cup sour milk plus 1/3 cup butter. 3/4 cup buttermilk plus 1/3 cup butter. Cooked sauces: 1 cup yogurt plus 1 tablespoon flour plus 2 teaspoons water. Cooked sauces: 1 cup evaporated milk plus 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice. Let stand 5 minutes to thicken. Dips: 1 cup yogurt (drain through a cheesecloth-lined sieve for 30 minutes in the refrigerator for a thicker texture). Dips: 1 cup cottage cheese plus 1/4 cup yogurt or buttermilk, briefly whirled in a blender. Dips: 6 ounces cream cheese plus 3 tablespoons milk,briefly whirled in a blender. Lower fat: 1 cup low-fat cottage cheese plus 1 tablespoon lemon juice plus 2 tablespoons skim milk, whipped until smooth in a blender. Lower fat: 1 can chilled evaporated milk whipped with 1 teaspoon lemon juice. 1 cup plain yogurt plus 1 tablespoon cornstarch 1 cup plain nonfat yogurt Substitutes for Fats in Baking * * (HV) denoted Healthy Version for low fat or fat free substitution in Baking Butter (1 cup) 1 cup trans-free vegetable shortening 3/4 cups of vegetable oil (example. Canola oil) Fruit purees (example- applesauce, pureed prunes, baby-food fruits). Add it along with some vegetable oil and reduce any other sweeteners needed in the recipe since fruit purees are already sweet. 1 cup polyunsaturated margarine (HV) 3/4 cup polyunsaturated oil like safflower oil (HV) 1 cup mild olive oil (not extra virgin)(HV) Note: Butter creates the flakiness and the richness which an oil/purees cant provide. If you don’t want to compromise that much to taste, replace half the butter with the substitutions. Shortening(1 cup) 1 cup polyunsaturated margarine like Earth Balance or Smart Balance(HV) 1 cup + 2tbsp Butter ( better tasting than shortening but more expensive and has cholesterol and a higher level of saturated fat; makes cookies less crunchy, bread crusts more crispy) 1 cup + 2 tbsp Margarine (better tasting than shortening but more expensive; makes cookies less crunchy, bread crusts tougher) 1 Cup – 2tbsp Lard (Has cholesterol and a higher level of saturated fat) Oil equal amount of apple sauce stiffly beaten egg whites into batter equal parts mashed banana equal parts yogurt prune puree grated raw zucchini or seeds removed if cooked. Works well in quick breads/muffins/coffee cakes and does not alter taste pumpkin puree (if the recipe can handle the taste change) Low fat cottage cheese (use only half of the required fat in the recipe). Can give rubbery texture to the end result Silken Tofu – (use only half of the required fat in the recipe). Can give rubbery texture to the end result Equal parts of fruit juice Note: Fruit purees can alter the taste of the final product is used in large quantities. Cream Cheese (1 cup) 4 tbsps. margarine plus 1 cup low-fat cottage cheese – blended. Add few teaspoons of fat-free milk if needed (HV) Heavy Cream (1 cup) 1 cup evaporated skim milk (or full fat milk) 1/2 cup low fat Yogurt plus 1/2 low fat Cottage Cheese (HV) 1/2 cup Yogurt plus 1/2 Cottage Cheese Sour Cream (1 cup) 1 cup plain yogurt (HV) 3/4 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt plus 1/3 cup melted butter 1 cup crème fraiche 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar plus enough whole milk to fill 1 cup (let stand 5-10 minutes) 1/2 cup low-fat cottage cheese plus 1/2 cup low-fat or nonfat yogurt (HV) 1 cup fat-free sour cream (HV) Note: How to Make Maple Syrup Substitute at home For 1 Cup Maple Syrup 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed 1 cup boiling water 1 teaspoon butter 1 teaspoon maple extract or vanilla extract Method In a heavy saucepan, place the granulated sugar and keep stirring until it melts and turns slightly brown. Alternatively in another pan, place brown sugar and water and bring to a boil without stirring. Now mix both the sugars and simmer in low heat until they come together as one thick syrup. Remove from heat, add butter and the extract. Use this in place of maple syrup. Store it in a fridge in an air tight container. Even though this was posted in their site long back, I found it helpful. So posting it for you. via chefinyou . cc image credit: flickr/zetrules

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  • How To Add Image And Text Watermarks to MS Word Documents

    - by Kavitha
    Watermark is a faint image that appears behind your text in MS Word Documents. Draft/Confidential are the most common background watermarks that we see in the documents circulated at office. MS Word 2007/2010 makes it very easy add watermarks as well as customize them based on the requirements. Add Image Watermark To MS Word Document To add image watermark to your document follow these steps 1. Switch to Page Layout tab of Ribbon Menu 2. Click on Watermark drop down menu and choose Custom Watermark option 3. Choose Picture watermark option, click on the button Select Picture.. and choose watermark image 4. Click Ok. That all. You are done. Add Text Watermark To MS Word Document To add image watermark to your document follow these steps 1. Switch to Page Layout tab of Ribbon Menu 2. Click on Watermark drop down menu 3. In the opened window, you can select one of the predefined text watermarks like Confidential, Draft, ASAP, URGENT, etc. If you are looking for one of these watermarks, you can choose them otherwise click on the option Custom Watermark… 4. Choose the option Text watermark and enter the text you want to set as watermark in the input area Text: (highlighted below). 5. Click on OK button. That’s all. This article titled,How To Add Image And Text Watermarks to MS Word Documents, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • AdvancedFormatProvider: Making string.format do more

    - by plblum
    When I have an integer that I want to format within the String.Format() and ToString(format) methods, I’m always forgetting the format symbol to use with it. That’s probably because its not very intuitive. Use {0:N0} if you want it with group (thousands) separators. text = String.Format("{0:N0}", 1000); // returns "1,000"   int value1 = 1000; text = value1.ToString("N0"); Use {0:D} or {0:G} if you want it without group separators. text = String.Format("{0:D}", 1000); // returns "1000"   int value2 = 1000; text2 = value2.ToString("D"); The {0:D} is especially confusing because Microsoft gives the token the name “Decimal”. I thought it reasonable to have a new format symbol for String.Format, "I" for integer, and the ability to tell it whether it shows the group separators. Along the same lines, why not expand the format symbols for currency ({0:C}) and percent ({0:P}) to let you omit the currency or percent symbol, omit the group separator, and even to drop the decimal part when the value is equal to the whole number? My solution is an open source project called AdvancedFormatProvider, a group of classes that provide the new format symbols, continue to support the rest of the native symbols and makes it easy to plug in additional format symbols. Please visit https://github.com/plblum/AdvancedFormatProvider to learn about it in detail and explore how its implemented. The rest of this post will explore some of the concepts it takes to expand String.Format() and ToString(format). AdvancedFormatProvider benefits: Supports {0:I} token for integers. It offers the {0:I-,} option to omit the group separator. Supports {0:C} token with several options. {0:C-$} omits the currency symbol. {0:C-,} omits group separators, and {0:C-0} hides the decimal part when the value would show “.00”. For example, 1000.0 becomes “$1000” while 1000.12 becomes “$1000.12”. Supports {0:P} token with several options. {0:P-%} omits the percent symbol. {0:P-,} omits group separators, and {0:P-0} hides the decimal part when the value would show “.00”. For example, 1 becomes “100 %” while 1.1223 becomes “112.23 %”. Provides a plug in framework that lets you create new formatters to handle specific format symbols. You register them globally so you can just pass the AdvancedFormatProvider object into String.Format and ToString(format) without having to figure out which plug ins to add. text = String.Format(AdvancedFormatProvider.Current, "{0:I}", 1000); // returns "1,000" text2 = String.Format(AdvancedFormatProvider.Current, "{0:I-,}", 1000); // returns "1000" text3 = String.Format(AdvancedFormatProvider.Current, "{0:C-$-,}", 1000.0); // returns "1000.00" The IFormatProvider parameter Microsoft has made String.Format() and ToString(format) format expandable. They each take an additional parameter that takes an object that implements System.IFormatProvider. This interface has a single member, the GetFormat() method, which returns an object that knows how to convert the format symbol and value into the desired string. There are already a number of web-based resources to teach you about IFormatProvider and the companion interface ICustomFormatter. I’ll defer to them if you want to dig more into the topic. The only thing I want to point out is what I think are implementation considerations. Why GetFormat() always tests for ICustomFormatter When you see examples of implementing IFormatProviders, the GetFormat() method always tests the parameter against the ICustomFormatter type. Why is that? public object GetFormat(Type formatType) { if (formatType == typeof(ICustomFormatter)) return this; else return null; } The value of formatType is already predetermined by the .net framework. String.Format() uses the StringBuilder.AppendFormat() method to parse the string, extracting the tokens and calling GetFormat() with the ICustomFormatter type. (The .net framework also calls GetFormat() with the types of System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo and System.Globalization.DateTimeFormatInfo but these are exclusive to how the System.Globalization.CultureInfo class handles its implementation of IFormatProvider.) Your code replaces instead of expands I would have expected the caller to pass in the format string to GetFormat() to allow your code to determine if it handles the request. My vision would be to return null when the format string is not supported. The caller would iterate through IFormatProviders until it finds one that handles the format string. Unfortunatley that is not the case. The reason you write GetFormat() as above is because the caller is expecting an object that handles all formatting cases. You are effectively supposed to write enough code in your formatter to handle your new cases and call .net functions (like String.Format() and ToString(format)) to handle the original cases. Its not hard to support the native functions from within your ICustomFormatter.Format function. Just test the format string to see if it applies to you. If not, call String.Format() with a token using the format passed in. public string Format(string format, object arg, IFormatProvider formatProvider) { if (format.StartsWith("I")) { // handle "I" formatter } else return String.Format(formatProvider, "{0:" + format + "}", arg); } Formatters are only used by explicit request Each time you write a custom formatter (implementer of ICustomFormatter), it is not used unless you explicitly passed an IFormatProvider object that supports your formatter into String.Format() or ToString(). This has several disadvantages: Suppose you have several ICustomFormatters. In order to have all available to String.Format() and ToString(format), you have to merge their code and create an IFormatProvider to return an instance of your new class. You have to remember to utilize the IFormatProvider parameter. Its easy to overlook, especially when you have existing code that calls String.Format() without using it. Some APIs may call String.Format() themselves. If those APIs do not offer an IFormatProvider parameter, your ICustomFormatter will not be available to them. The AdvancedFormatProvider solves the first two of these problems by providing a plug-in architecture.

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  • Facebook: Hide Your Status Updates From Your Boss/Ex or Any Specific Friend

    - by Gopinath
    Sometime we want to hide our status updates from specific people who are already accepted as Friends in Facebook. Do you wonder why we need to accept someone as friend and then hide status updates from them? Well, may be you have to accept a friend request from your boss, but certainly love to hide status updates as well as other Facebook activities from him. Something similar goes with few annoying friends whom you cant’ de-friend but like to hide your updates. Thanks to Facebook for providing fine grain privacy options on controlling what we want to share and with whom we want to share. It’s very easy to block one or more specific friends from seeing your status updates. Here are the step by step instructions: 1. Login to Facebook and go to Privacy Settings Page. It shows a page something similar to what is shown in the below image. 2. Click on “Customize settings” link 3. Expand the privacy options available in the section Things I Share -> Posts by me. Choose Customise from the list of available options   4. Type the list of unwanted friend’s names in to input box of the section "Hide this from”. Here is a screen grab of couple of my friends whom I added for writing this post 5. Click the Save Settings button. That’s all. Facebook will ensure that these people will not see your status updates on their news feed. Enjoyed the Facebook Tip? Join Tech Dreams on Facebook to read all our blog posts on your Facebook’s news feed. Join us on Facebook to read all our stories right inside your Facebook news feed.

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