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• Display real time years, months, weeks and days between 2 days in JavaScript

  - by alex

  This is what I've coded it up, and it appears to work. window.onload = function() { var currentSpan = document.getElementById('current'); var minute = 60000, hour = minute * 60, day = hour * 24, week = day * 7, month = week * 4, year = day * 365; var start = new Date(2009, 6, 1); setInterval(function() { var now = new Date(); var difference = now - start; var years = Math.floor(difference / year), months = Math.floor((difference - (years * year)) / month), weeks = Math.floor((difference - (months * month + years * year)) / week), days = Math.floor((difference - (weeks * week + months * month + years * year)) / day); currentSpan.innerHTML = 'Since has passed: ' + years + ' years, ' + months + ' months, ' + weeks + ' weeks and ' + days + ' days'; }, 500); }; This seems to update my span fine, and all the numbers look correct. However, the code looks quite ugly. Do I really need to set up faux constants like that, and then do all that math to calculate what I want? It's been a while since I've worked with the Date object. Is this the best way to do this?

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• how to make Regular expression into non-greedy ?

  - by Rueta

  Hi everyone! I have made a Work with JQ. My Work is a string width a special character block begin and end of string. I want take the text in that special characters, i used regular expression for find in string, but how to make JQ find multi result when have two special character or more. My html here; <div id="container"> <div id="textcontainer"> Cu?c chi?n pháp lý gi?a [|co th?|nghi?m|] th? tru?ng [|test2|dây là test l?n 2|] ch?ng khoán [|M?|day la nuoc my|] và ngân hàng d?u tu quy?n l?c nh?t Ph? Wall m?i ch? b?t d?u. </div> </div> and my JQ $(document).ready(function() { var takedata = $("#textcontainer").text(); var test = 'abcd adddb'; var filterdata = takedata.match(/(\[.+\])/); alert(filterdata); //end write js }); my result is: [|co th?|nghi?m|] th? tru?ng [|test2|dây là test l?n 2|] ch?ng khoán [|M?|day la nuoc my|] . but this is'nt the result i want :(. How to get [text] for times 1 and [demo] for times 2 ?. pls help me !. thankyou :)

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• MS Query returns data inside itself but does not export it to Excel

  - by kappa

  Hi, I'm having a strange problem with Excel and MS Query: I'm using MS Query to run a T-SQL query against a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and return the results to Excel. To do this, I open Excel, go to Data - Import external data - New database query, select my data source, paste the SQL script in MS Query and click File - Return data to Microsoft Office Excel, leaving all the query options to their defaults. This works fine for many other Excel files, but this time although MS Query shows the correct data when I paste the SQL script, after returning to Excel all I get is the query name in the upper left cell, with no data returned. I fear the cause could be the SQL script, as it contains some advanced functions like union all, UDFs and variables. Here's the script: declare @date smalldatetime set @date = dateadd(day, datediff(day, 0, getdate()), 0) select [date], sum([hours]) as [hours] from ( select [date], [hours] from [server].[dbo].[udf] (84, '2010-01-01', @date) union all select [date], [hours] from [server].[dbo].[udf] (89, '2010-01-01', @date) union all select [date], [hours] from [server].[dbo].[udf] (93, '2010-01-01', @date) ) as [a] group by [date] order by [date] asc I can't get rid of the UDF as inside them are done advanced groupings involving cursors and temporary tables, nor I can remove the variable as the UDF won't accept dateadd(day, datediff(day, 0, getdate()), 0) as parameter. Any ideas? Thanks in advance, Andrea.

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• Getting unpredictable data into a tabular format

  - by Acorn

  The situation: Each page I scrape has <input> elements with a title= and a value= I don't know what is going to be on the page. I want to have all my collected data in a single table at the end, with a column for each title. So basically, I need each row of data to line up with all the others, and if a row doesn't have a certain element, then it should be blank (but there must be something there to keep the alignment). eg. First page has: {animal: cat, colour: blue, fruit: lemon, day: monday} Second page has: {animal: fish, colour: green, day: saturday} Third page has: {animal: dog, number: 10, colour: yellow, fruit: mango, day: tuesday} Then my resulting table should be: animal | number | colour | fruit | day cat | none | blue | lemon | monday fish | none | green | none | saturday dog | 10 | yellow | mango | tuesday Although it would be good to keep the order of the title value pairs, which I know dictionaries wont do. So basically, I need to generate columns from all the titles (kept in order but somehow merged together) What would be the best way of going about this without knowing all the possible titles and explicitly specifying an order for the values to be put in?

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• Javascript array of dates - not iterating properly (jquery ui datepicker)

  - by PaulB

  Hi I have some code which builds an array of date ranges. I then call a function, passing it a date, and compare that date with dates in the array. I'm doing it this way because the dates are stored in a cms, and I'm manipulating the JqueryUI datepicker. Unfortunately my code only checks the first date range in the array - and I can't figure out why! I think it's probably something simple (/stupid!) - if anyone can shed some light on it I'd be extremely grateful! The code is below - the june-september range works fine, the december to jan is totally ignored... <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> var ps1 = new Date(2010, 06-1, 18); var pe1 = new Date(2010, 09-1, 03); var ps2 = new Date(2010, 12-1, 20); var pe2 = new Date(2011, 01-1, 02); var peakStart = new Array(ps1,ps2); var peakEnd = new Array(pe1,pe2); function checkDay(date) { var day = date.getDay(); for (var i=0; i<peakStart.length; i++) { if ((date > peakStart[i]) && (date < peakEnd[i])) { return [(day == 5), '']; } else { return [(day == 1 || day == 5), '']; } } } </script>

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• stored procedure issue, has to do with my where clause and if statement

  - by MyHeadHurts

  right now my stored procedure is returning 2 different result sets one for @booked and the other for @booked1 if you look closely my query is doing the same thing for each @booked and @booked but one is for a user selected year and the other for the current year. I don't want two different result sets, i want to join the selected year and the current year side by side by SDESCR(which is a column that they have in common) another hurdle i am facing is i am use @mode to decide whether the user wants netsales, sales... so on. I know i need sometype of join but, it isnt working because i have a where statement that says where dyyyy= @yeartoget which won't allow the current year data to work ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[test1] @mode varchar(20), @YearToGet int AS SET NOCOUNT ON Declare @Booked Int Set @Booked = CONVERT(int,DateAdd(year, @YearToGet - Year(getdate() + 1), DateAdd(day, DateDiff(day, 1, getdate()), 1) ) ) Declare @Booked1 Int Set @Booked1 = CONVERT(int,DateAdd(year, (year( getdate() )) - Year(getdate() + 1), DateAdd(day, DateDiff(day, 1, getdate()), 1) ) ) If @mode = 'Sales' Select Division, SDESCR, DYYYY, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked Then NetAmount End) ASofNetSales, SUM(NetAmount) AS YENetSales, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked Then PARTY End) AS ASofPAX, SUM(PARTY) AS YEPAX From dbo.B101BookingsDetails Where DYYYY = @YearToGet Group By SDESCR, DYYYY, Division Order By Division, SDESCR, DYYYY else if @mode = 'netsales' Select Division, SDESCR, DYYYY, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked Then NetAmount End) ASofNetSales, SUM(NetAmount) AS YENetSales, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked Then PARTY End) AS ASofPAX, SUM(PARTY) AS YEPAX From dbo.B101BookingsDetails Where DYYYY = @YearToGet Group By SDESCR, DYYYY, Division Order By Division, SDESCR, DYYYY If @mode = 'Sales' Select Division, SDESCR, DYYYY, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked1 Then NetAmount End) currentNetSales, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked1 Then PARTY End) AS currentPAX From dbo.B101BookingsDetails Where DYYYY = (year( getdate() )) Group By SDESCR, DYYYY, Division Order By Division, SDESCR, DYYYY else if @mode = 'netsales' Select Division, SDESCR, DYYYY, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked1 Then NetAmount End) currentNetSales, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked1 Then PARTY End) AS currentPAX From dbo.B101BookingsDetails Where DYYYY = (year( getdate() )) Group By SDESCR, DYYYY, Division Order By Division, SDESCR, DYYYY Else if @mode = 'Inssales' Select Division, SDESCR, DYYYY, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked1 Then InsAmount End) currentInsSales, Sum(Case When Booked <= @Booked1 Then PARTY End) AS currentPAX From dbo.B101BookingsDetails Where DYYYY = (year( getdate() )) Group By SDESCR, DYYYY, Division Order By Division, SDESCR, DYYYY

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• Optimizing T-SQL where an array would be nice

  - by Polatrite

  Alright, first you'll need to grab a barf bag. I've been tasked with optimizing several old stored procedures in our database. This SP does the following: 1) cursor loops through a series of "buildings" 2) cursor loops through a week, Sunday-Saturday 3) has a huge set of IF blocks that are responsible for counting how many Objects of what Types are present in a given building Essentially what you'll see in this code block is that, if there are 5 objects of type #2, it will increment @Type_2_Objects_5 by 1. IF @Number_Type_1_Objects = 0 BEGIN SET @Type_1_Objects_0 = @Type_1_Objects_0 + 1 END IF @Number_Type_1_Objects = 1 BEGIN SET @Type_1_Objects_1 = @Type_1_Objects_1 + 1 END IF @Number_Type_1_Objects = 2 BEGIN SET @Type_1_Objects_2 = @Type_1_Objects_2 + 1 END IF @Number_Type_1_Objects = 3 BEGIN SET @Type_1_Objects_3 = @Type_1_Objects_3 + 1 END [... Objects_4 through Objects_20 for Type_1] IF @Number_Type_2_Objects = 0 BEGIN SET @Type_2_Objects_0 = @Type_2_Objects_0 + 1 END IF @Number_Type_2_Objects = 1 BEGIN SET @Type_2_Objects_1 = @Type_2_Objects_1 + 1 END IF @Number_Type_2_Objects = 2 BEGIN SET @Type_2_Objects_2 = @Type_2_Objects_2 + 1 END IF @Number_Type_2_Objects = 3 BEGIN SET @Type_2_Objects_3 = @Type_2_Objects_3 + 1 END [... Objects_4 through Objects_20 for Type_2] In addition to being extremely hacky (and limited to a quantity of 20 objects), it seems like a terrible way of handling this. In a traditional language, this could easily be solved with a 2-dimensional array... objects[type][quantity] += 1; I'm a T-SQL novice, but since writing stored procedures often uses a lot of temporary tables (which could essentially be a 2-dimensional array) I was wondering if someone could illuminate a better way of handling a situation like this with two dynamic pieces of data to store. Requested in comments: The columns are simply Number_Type_1_Objects, Number_Type_2_Objects, Number_Type_3_Objects, Number_Type_4_Objects, Number_Type_5_Objects, and CurrentDateTime. Each row in the table represents 5 minutes. The expected output is to figure out what percentage of time a given quantity of objects is present throughout each day. Sunday - Object Type 1 0 objects - 69 rows, 5:45, 34.85% 1 object - 85 rows, 7:05, 42.93% 2 objects - 44 rows, 3:40, 22.22% On Sunday, there were 0 objects of type 1 for 34.85% of the day. There was 1 object for 42.93% of the day, and 2 objects for 22.22% of the day. Repeat for each object type.

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• Why is this Java Calendar comparison bad?

  - by joe7pak

  Hello folks. I'm having an inexplicable problem with the Java Calendar class when I'm trying to compare to dates. I'm trying to compare to Calendars and determine if their difference is than 1 day, and do things bases on that difference or not. But it doesn't work. If I do this with the two dates: String currDate = aCurrentUTCCalendar.getTime().toString(); String localDate = aLocalCalendar.getTime().toString(); I get these results: currDate = "Thu Jan 06 05:58:00 MST 2010" localDate = "Tue Jan 05 00:02:00 MST 2010" This is correct. But if I do this: long curr = aCurrentUTCCalendar.getTime().getTime(); long local = aLocalCalendar.getTime().getTime(); I get these results: ( in milliseconds since the epoch ) curr = -125566110120000 local = 1262674920000 Since there is only about a 30 hour different between the two, the magnitudes are vastly different, not to mention that annoying negative sign. This causes problems if I do this: long day = 60 * 60 * 24 * 1000; // 86400000 millis, one day if( local - curr > day ) { // do something } What's wrong? Why are the getTime().toString() calls correct, but the getTime().getTime() calls are vastly different? I'm using jdk 1.6_06 on WinXP. I can't upgrade the JDK for various reasons.

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• MySQL nested CASE error I need help with?

  - by AK

  What I am trying to do here is: IF the records in table todo as identified in $done have a value in the column recurinterval then THEN reset date_scheduled column ELSE just set status_id column to 6 for those records. This is the error I get from mysql_error() ... You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'CASE recurinterval != 0 AND recurinterval IS NOT NULL THEN SET date_sche' at line 2 How can I make this statement work? UPDATE todo CASE recurinterval != 0 AND recurinterval IS NOT NULL THEN SET date_scheduled = CASE recurunit WHEN 'DAY' THEN DATE_ADD(date_scheduled, INTERVAL recurinterval DAY) WHEN 'WEEK' THEN DATE_ADD(date_scheduled, INTERVAL recurinterval WEEK) WHEN 'MONTH' THEN DATE_ADD(date_scheduled, INTERVAL recurinterval MONTH) WHEN 'YEAR' THEN DATE_ADD(date_scheduled, INTERVAL recurinterval YEAR) END WHERE todo_id IN ($done) ELSE SET status_id = 6 WHERE todo_id IN ($done) END The following mySQL statement worked just fine before I revised like above. UPDATE todo SET date_scheduled = CASE recurunit WHEN 'DAY' THEN DATE_ADD(date_scheduled, INTERVAL recurinterval DAY) WHEN 'WEEK' THEN DATE_ADD(date_scheduled, INTERVAL recurinterval WEEK) WHEN 'MONTH' THEN DATE_ADD(date_scheduled, INTERVAL recurinterval MONTH) WHEN 'YEAR' THEN DATE_ADD(date_scheduled, INTERVAL recurinterval YEAR) END WHERE todo_id IN ($done) AND recurinterval != 0 AND recurinterval IS NOT NULL

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• MySql Check if NOW() falls within a weekday/time range

  - by Niall

  I have a table as follows: CREATE TABLE `zonetimes` ( `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `zone_id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL, `active_from_day` tinyint(1) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '2', `active_to_day` tinyint(1) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '2', `active_from` time NOT NULL, `active_to` time NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ) ENGINE=MyISAM ; So, a user could add a time entry starting on a particular day and time and ending on a particular day and time, eg: Between Monday 08:00 and Friday 18:00 or Between Thursday 15:00 and Tuesday 15:00 (Note the crossover at the end of the week). I need to query this data and determine if a zone is currently active (NOW(), DAYOFWEEK() etc)... This is turning out to be quite tricky. If I didn't have overlaps, eg: from 'Wednesday 8pm to Tuesday 4am' or from 'Thursday 4pm to Tuesday 4pm' this would be easy with BETWEEN. Also, need to allow a user to add for the entire week, eg: Monday 8am - Monday 8am (This should be easy enough, eg: where (active_from_day=active_to_day AND active_from=active_to) OR .. Any ideas? Note: I found a similar question here Timespan - Check for weekday and time of day in mysql but it didn't get an answer. One of the suggestions was to store each day as a separate row. I would much rather store one time span for multiple days though.

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• Cakephp cache only caching one file per action

  - by Jamesz

  Hi, I have a songs controller. Within the songs controller i have a 'view' action which get's passed an id, eg /songs/view/1 /songs/view/5 /songs/view/500 When a user visits /songs/view/1, the file is cached correctly and saved as 'songs_view_1.php' Now for the problem, when a user hit's a different song, eg /songs/view/2, the 'songs_view_1.php' is deleted and '/songs/view/2.php' is in it's place. The cahced files will stay there for a day if I don't visit a different url, and visiting a different action will not affect any other action's cached file. I've tried replacing my 'cake' folder (from 1.2 to 1.2.6), but that didn't do anything. I get no error messages at all and nothing in the logs. Here's my code, I've tried umpteen variations all ending up with the same problem. var $helpers = array('Cache'); var $cacheAction = array( 'view/' => '+1 day' ); Any ideas? EDIT: After some more testing, this code var $cacheAction = array( 'view/1' => "1 day", 'view/2' => "1 day" ); will cache 'view/1' or 'view/2', but delete the previous page as before. If I visit '/view/3' it will delete the cached page from before... sigh EDIT: Having the same issue on another server with same code...

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• How to test a Grails Service that utilizes a criteria query (with spock)?

  - by user569825

  I am trying to test a simple service method. That method mainly just returns the results of a criteria query for which I want to test if it returns the one result or not (depending on what is queried for). The problem is, that I am unaware of how to right the corresponding test correctly. I am trying to accomplish it via spock, but doing the same with any other way of testing also fails. Can one tell me how to amend the test in order to make it work for the task at hand? (BTW I'd like to keep it a unit test, if possible.) The EventService Method public HashSet<Event> listEventsForDate(Date date, int offset, int max) { date.clearTime() def c = Event.createCriteria() def results = c { and { le("startDate", date+1) // starts tonight at midnight or prior? ge("endDate", date) // ends today or later? } maxResults(max) order("startDate", "desc") } return results } The Spock Specification package myapp import grails.plugin.spock.* import spock.lang.* class EventServiceSpec extends Specification { def event def eventService = new EventService() def setup() { event = new Event() event.publisher = Mock(User) event.title = 'et' event.urlTitle = 'ut' event.details = 'details' event.location = 'location' event.startDate = new Date(2010,11,20, 9, 0) event.endDate = new Date(2011, 3, 7,18, 0) } def "list the Events of a specific date"() { given: "An event ranging over multiple days" when: "I look up a date for its respective events" def results = eventService.listEventsForDate(searchDate, 0, 100) then: "The event is found or not - depending on the requested date" numberOfResults == results.size() where: searchDate | numberOfResults new Date(2010,10,19) | 0 // one day before startDate new Date(2010,10,20) | 1 // at startDate new Date(2010,10,21) | 1 // one day after startDate new Date(2011, 1, 1) | 1 // someday during the event range new Date(2011, 3, 6) | 1 // one day before endDate new Date(2011, 3, 7) | 1 // at endDate new Date(2011, 3, 8) | 0 // one day after endDate } } The Error groovy.lang.MissingMethodException: No signature of method: static myapp.Event.createCriteria() is applicable for argument types: () values: [] at myapp.EventService.listEventsForDate(EventService.groovy:47) at myapp.EventServiceSpec.list the Events of a specific date(EventServiceSpec.groovy:29)

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• How do you program a custom WordPress plug-in?

  - by James

  I have seen several WordPress plug-ins for adding a "quote of the day" feature (or something similar) to your blog. How do you create a customized one? I'm looking for something that will pull a daily entry from a list/database of my creation. I apologize if my question is not detailed enough. Still a newbie with WordPress. PART 2: Thanks for your prompt and on-point responses. With your responses and some additional research, I'm able to fine-tune my question. What I wish to accomplish is something similar to Amazon's Deal of the Day widget. Except, in my case, it will simply be a title and a corresponding link. My presumption is that I will set up a database and (using php or something similar) have the information drawn from the database and displayed in my WP sidebar. Additionally, I forgot to mention the time element. I want the displayed info to update once a day, at or around the same time each day. Any ideas? Thanks again. I'm so glad I found stackoverflow.

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• Redundancy in doing sum()

  - by Abhi

  table1 - id, time_stamp, value This table consists of 10 id's. Each id would be having a value for each hour in a day. So for 1 day, there would be 240 records in this table. table2 - id Table2 consists of a dynamically changing subset of id's present in table1. At a particular instance, the intention is to get sum(value) from table1, considering id's only in table2, grouping by each hour in that day, giving the summarized values a rank and repeating this each day. the query is at this stage: select time_stamp, sum(value), rank() over (partition by trunc(time_stamp) order by sum(value) desc) rn from table1 where exists (select t2.id from table2 t2 where id=t2.id) and time_stamp >= to_date('05/04/2010 00','dd/mm/yyyy hh24') and time_stamp <= to_date('25/04/2010 23','dd/mm/yyyy hh24') group by time_stamp order by time_stamp asc If the query is correct, can this be made more efficient, considering that, table1 will actually consist of thousand's of id's instead of 10 ? EDIT: I am using sum(value) 2 times in the query, which I am not able to get a workaround such that the sum() is done only once. Pls help on this

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• "Syntax error in INSERT INTO statement". Why?

  - by Kevin

  My code is below. I have a method where I pass in three parameters and they get written out to an MS Access database table. However, I keep getting a syntax error message. Can anyone tell me why? I got this example from the internet. private static void insertRecord(string day, int hour, int loadKW) { string connString = @"Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=C:\LoadForecastDB.accdb"; OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection(connString); string ins = @"INSERT INTO Forecasts (Day, Hour, Load) VALUES (?,?,?)"; OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(ins, conn); cmd.Parameters.Add("@day", OleDbType.VarChar).Value = day; cmd.Parameters.Add("@hour", OleDbType.Integer).Value = hour; cmd.Parameters.Add("@load", OleDbType.Integer).Value = loadKW; conn.Open(); try { int count = cmd.ExecuteNonQuery(); } catch (OleDbException ex) { Console.WriteLine(ex.Message); } finally { conn.Close(); } }

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• Unsure how i load the right data into a tableview, chosen from a previous tableview.

  - by Bob

  I currently have two TableViewControllers. The first has seven objects, each day-name listed. Weekdays *mandag = [[Weekdays alloc] initWithName:@"Mandag" daylist:mondayArray]; Weekdays *tirsdag = [[Weekdays alloc] initWithName:@"Tirsdag" daylist:tuesdayArray]; Weekdays *onsdag = [[Weekdays alloc] initWithName:@"Onsdag" daylist:wedensdayArray]; Weekdays *torsdag = [[Weekdays alloc] initWithName:@"Torsdag" daylist:thursdayArray]; Weekdays *fredag = [[Weekdays alloc] initWithName:@"Fredag" daylist:fridayArray]; Weekdays *lordag = [[Weekdays alloc] initWithName:@"Lørdag" daylist:saturdayArray]; Weekdays *sondag = [[Weekdays alloc] initWithName:@"Søndag" daylist:sundayArray]; daylist being a NSMutableArray. The idea is: The name of the day is displayed on table-1. And the array (daylist) of each day is displayed on table-2 - when tabbed one a day. The first table, displaying the names is working fine: VisueltSkemaAppDelegate *appDelegate = (VisueltSkemaAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate]; Weekdays *ugeDag = (Weekdays *)[appDelegate.ugeDage objectAtIndex:indexPath.row]; cell.textLabel.text = ugeDag.name; return cell; However i thought i could do the same, for the second table - but i have been strugling with it for hours now. This is what i got: VisueltSkemaAppDelegate *appDelegate = (VisueltSkemaAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate]; Weekdays *ugeDag = (Weekdays *)[appDelegate.ugeDage objectAtIndex:indexPath.row]; cell.textLabel.text = [ugeDag.daylist objectAtIndex:indexPath.row]; return cell; Abit more of the code: http://pastebin.com/iW5AAJXt

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• Is it possible to Store Enum value in String?

  - by Narasimham K

  Actally my java progrem like... public class Schedule{ public static enum RepeatType { DAILY, WEEKLY, MONTHLY; } public static enum WeekdayType { MONDAY(Calendar.MONDAY), TUESDAY(Calendar.TUESDAY), WEDNESDAY( Calendar.WEDNESDAY), THURSDAY(Calendar.THURSDAY), FRIDAY( Calendar.FRIDAY), SATURDAY(Calendar.SATURDAY), SUNDAY( Calendar.SUNDAY); private int day; private WeekdayType(int day) { this.day = day; } public static List<Date> generateSchedule(RepeatType repeatType,List<WeekdayType> repeatDays) { ----------------------------- ----------------------------//hear some logic i wrote }//Method } And i'm calling the method into my Business class like following... @RemotingInclude public void createEvent(TimetableVO timetableVO) { if ("repeatDays".equals(timetableVO.getSearchKey())) { List<Date> repeatDaysList=Schedule.generateSchedule(timetableVO.getRepeatType(),timetableVO.getRepeatDays()); } } And Finally TimetableVO is @Entity @Table(name="EC_TIMETABLE") public class TimetableVO extends AbstractVO{ ----- private RepeatType repeatType; private List<WeekdayType> repeatDays;//But in this case the method generateSchedule(-,-) was not calling. ----- } So my Question is Which one is Better Statement in the Following... private List<WeekdayType> repeatDays; (or) private String repeatDays;//if we give like this `How to Convert Enum type to String` because generateSchedule() method taking enum type value....

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• PHP- Display days weekly by giving 2 dates

  - by librium

  I'd like display dates by week number between giving 2 dates like example below. Is this possible in PHP? if the dates are 2010-12-01 thru 2010-12-19, it will display it as follows. week-1 2010-12-01 2010-12-02 2010-12-03 2010-12-04 2010-12-05 2010-12-06 2010-12-07 week-2 2010-12-08 2010-12-09 2010-12-10 2010-12-11 2010-12-12 2010-12-13 2010-12-14 week-3 2010-12-15 2010-12-16 2010-12-17 2010-12-18 2010-12-19 and so on... I use mysql. It has startdate end enddate fields. thank you in advance. I can get how many weeks in those giving 2 dates and display them using a datediff('ww', '2010-12-01', '2010-12-19', false); I found on the internet. And I can display dates between two dates as follows. But I am having trouble grouping them by week. $sdate = "2010-12-01"; $edate = "2010-12-19"; $days = getDaysInBetween($sdate, $edate); foreach ($days as $val) { echo $val; } function getDaysInBetween($start, $end) { // Vars $day = 86400; // Day in seconds $format = 'Y-m-d'; // Output format (see PHP date funciton) $sTime = strtotime($start); // Start as time $eTime = strtotime($end); // End as time $numDays = round(($eTime - $sTime) / $day) + 1; $days = array(); // Get days for ($d = 0; $d < $numDays; $d++) { $days[] = date($format, ($sTime + ($d * $day))); } // Return days return $days; }

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• SQLAuthority News – Memories at Anniversary of SQL Wait Stats Book

  - by pinaldave

  SQL Wait Stats About a year ago, I had very proud moment. I had published my second book SQL Server Wait Stats with me as a primary author. It has been a long journey since then. The book got great response and it was widely accepted in the community. It was first of its kind of book written specifically on Wait Stats and Performance. The book was based on my earlier month long series written on the same subject SQL Server Wait Stats. Today, on the anniversary of the book, lots of things come to my mind let me share a few here. Idea behind Blog Series A very common question I often receive is why I wrote a 30 day series on Wait Stats. There were two reasons for it. 1) I have been working with SQL Server for a long time and have troubleshoot more than hundreds of SQL Server which are related to performance tuning. It was a great experience and it taught me a lot of new things. I always documented my experience. After a while I found that I was able to completely rely on my own notes when I was troubleshooting any servers. It is right then I decided to document my experience for the community. 2) While working with wait stats there were a few things, which I thought I knew it well as they were working. However, there was always a fear in the back of mind that what happens if what I believed was incorrect and I was on the wrong path all the time. There was only one way to get it validated. Put it out in front community with my understanding and request further help to improve my understanding. It worked, it worked beautifully. I received plenty of conversations, emails and comments. I refined my content based on various conversations and make it more relevant and near accurate. I guess above two are the major reasons for beginning my journey on writing Wait Stats blog series. Idea behind Book After writing a blog series there was a good amount of request I keep on receiving that I should convert it to eBook or proper book as reading blog posts is great but it goes not give a comprehensive understanding of the subject. The very common feedback from users who were beginning the subject that they will prefer to read it in a structured method. After hearing the feedback for more than 4 months, I decided to write a book based on the blog posts. When I envisioned book, I wanted to make sure this book addresses the wait stats concepts from the fundamentals and fill the gaps of blogs I wrote earlier. Rick Morelan and Joes 2 Pros Team I must acknowledge my co-author Rick Morelan for his unconditional support in writing this book. I had already authored one book before I published this book. The experience to write the book was out of the world. Writing blog posts are much much easier than writing books. The efforts it takes to write a book is 100 times more even though the content is ready. I could have not done it myself if there was not tremendous support of my co-author and editor’s team. We spend days and days researching and discussing various concepts covered in the book. When we were in doubt we reached out to experts as well did a practical reproduction of the scenarios to validate the concepts and claims. After continuous 3 months of hard work we were able to get this book out in the community. September 1st – the lucky day Well, we had to select any day to publish the books. When book was completed in August last week we felt very glad. We all had worked hard and having a sample draft book in hand was feeling like having a newborn baby in our hand. Every time my books are published I feel the same joy which I had when my daughter was born. The feeling of holding a new book in hand is the (almost) same feeling as holding newborn baby. I am excited. For me September 1st has been the luckiest day in mind life. My daughter Shaivi was born on September 1st. Since then every September first has been excellent day and have taken me to the next step in life. I believe anything and everything I do on September 1st it is turning out to be successful and blessed. Rick and I had finished a book in the last week of August. We sent it to the publisher (printer) and asked him to take the book live as soon as possible. We did not decide on any date as we wanted the book to get out as fast as it can. Interesting enough, the publisher/printer selected September 1st for publishing the book. He published the book on 1st September and I knew it at the same time that this book will go next level. Book Model – The Most Beautiful Girl We were done with book. We had no budget left for marketing. Rick and I had a long conversation regarding how to spread the words for the book so it can reach to many people. While we were talking about marketing Rick come up with the idea that we should hire a most beautiful girl around who acknowledge our book and genuinely care for book. It was a difficult task and Rick asked me to find a more beautiful girl. I am a father and the most beautiful girl for me my daughter. This was not a difficult task for me. Rick had given me task to find the most beautiful girl and I just could not think of anyone else than my own daughter. I still do not know what Rick thought about this idea but I had already made up my mind. You can see the detailed blog post here. The Fun Experiments Book Signing Event We had lots of fun moments along this book. We have given away more books to people for free than we have sold them actually. We had done book signing events, contests, and just plain give away when we found people can be benefited from this book. There was never an intention to make money and get rich. We just wanted that more and more people know about this new concept and learn from it. Today when I look back to the earnings there is nothing much we have earned if you talk about dollars. However the best reward which we have received is the satisfaction and love of community. The amount of emails, conversations we have so far received for this book is over thousands. We had fun writing this book, it was indeed a very satisfying journey. I have earned lots of friends while learning and exploring. Availability The book is one year old but still very relevant when it is about performance tuning. It is available at various online book stores. If you have read the book, do let me know what you think of it. Amazon | Kindle | Flipkart | Indiaplaza Reference:  Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority, SQLAuthority Book Review, T SQL, Technology

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• Personal Development : Time, Planning , Repairs & Maintenance

  - by Rajesh Pillai

  Personal Development : Time, Planning, Repairs & Maintenance These are just my thoughts, but some you may find something interesting in it. Please think over it. We may know many things, but still we always keeps procrastinating it. I have written this as I have heard many people coming back and saying they don’t have time to do things they like. These are my thoughts buy may be useful to someone else too. Certain things in life needs periodic repairs and maintenance. To cite some examples , your CAR, your HOUSE, your personal laptop/desktop, your health etc. Likewise there are certain other things in professional life that requires repair/ maintenance /or some kind of polishing, so that you always stay on top of it. But they are not always obvious. Some of them are - Improving your communication skills - Increasing your vocabulary - Upgrading your technical skills - Pursuing your hobby - Increasing your knowledge/awareness etc… etc… And then there are certain things that we are always short of…. one is TIME. We all know TIME is one of the most precious things in life and yet we all are very miserable at managing it. Remember you can only manage it and not control it. You can only control which you own or which you create. In theory time is infinite. So, there should be abundant of it. But remember one thing, you know this, it’s not reversible. Once it has elapsed you cannot live it again. Think over it. So, how do find that golden 25th hour every day. To find the 25th hour you need to reflect back on your current daily activities. Analyze them and see where you are spending most of your time and is it really important. Even the 8 hours that you spent in the office, is it spent fruitfully. At the end of the day is the 8 precious hour that you spent was worth it. Just reflect back on your activities. Did you learn something? If yes did you make a point to NOTE IT. If you didn’t NOTED it then was the time you spent really worth it. Just ponder over it. Some calculations of your daily activities where most of the time is spent. Let’s start (in no particular order though) - Sleep (6.5 hours) [Remember you only require 6 good hours of sleep every day]. Some may thing it is 8, but it’s a myth.   o To achive 6 hours of sleep and be in good health you can practice 15 minutes of daily meditation. So effectively you can    round it to 6.5 hours. - Morning chores(2 hours) : Some may need to prepare breakfast and all other things. - Office commuting (avg. to and fro 3 hours) - Office Work (avg 9.5 hours) Total Hours: 21 hours effective time which is spent irrespective of what you do. There may be some variations here and there. Still you have 3 hours EXTRA. Where do these 3 hours go? If you can find it, then you may get that golden 25th hour out of these 3 hours. Let’s discount 2 hours for contingencies, still you have 1 hour with you. If you can’t find it then you are living a direction less life. As you can see, the 25th Hour lies within the 24 hours of the day. It’s upto each one of us to find and make use of it. Now what can you do with that 25th hour i.e. 1 hour extra of your life. Imagine the possibility. Again some calculations 1 hour daily * 30 days = 30 hours every month 30 hours pm * 12 month = 360 hours every year. 360 hours every year seems very promising. Let’s add some contingencies, say, let’s be optimistic and say 50 % contingency. Still you have 180 hours every year. That leaves with 30 minutes every day of extra time. That’s hell a lot of time, if you could manage it. These may sound like a high talk [yes, it is, unless you apply these simple rules and rationalize your everyday living and stop procrastinating]. NOTE: I haven’t taken weekend, holidays and leaves into account. So, that leaves us with a lot of buffer time. You can meet family friends, relatives, other tasks, and yet have these 180 pure hours of joy every year. Do whatever you want to do with it. So, how important is this 180 hours per year to you? Just think over it. You may use it the way you like - 50 hours [pursue your hobby like drawing, crafting, learn dance, learn juggling, learn swimming, travelling hmm.. anything you like doing and you didn’t had time to do it.] - 30 hours you can learn a new programming language or technology (i.e. you can get comfortable with it) - 50 hours [improve existing skills] - 20 hours [improve you communication skill]. Do some light reading. - 30 hours [YOU DECIDE WHAT TO DO]? So, if you had done this for one year you would have learnt a new programming language, upgraded existing skills, improved you communication etc.. If you had done this for two years.. imagine the level of personal development or growth which you may have attained….. If you had done this for three years….. NOW I think I don’t need to mention this… So, you still have TIME, as they say TIME is infinite. So, make judicious use of this precious thing. And never ever comeback saying “I don’t have time”. So, if you are RICH in TIME, everything else will be automatically taken care of, as those things may just be a byproduct of how you spend your time… So, happy TIMING your TIME everyday.

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• Workshops, online content show how Oracle infuses simplicity, mobility, extensibility into user experience

  - by mvaughan

  By Kathy Miedema & Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle has made a huge investment into the user experience of its many different software product families, and recent releases showcase big changes and features that aim to promote end user engagement and efficiency by streamlining navigation and simplifying the user interface. But making Oracle’s enterprise software great-looking and usable doesn’t stop when Oracle products go out the door. The Applications User Experience (UX) team recognizes that our customers may need to customize software to fit their work processes. And that’s why we provide tools such as user experience design patterns to help you maintain the Oracle user experience as you tailor your application to fit your business needs. Often, however, customers may need some context around user experience. How has the Oracle user experience been designed and constructed? Why is a good user experience important for users? How does understanding what goes into the user experience benefit the people who purchase the software for users? There’s a short answer to these questions, and you can read about it on Usable Apps. But truly understanding Oracle’s investment and seeing how it applies across product families occasionally requires a deeper dive into the Oracle user experience, especially if you’re an influencer or decision-maker about Oracle products. To help frame these decisions, the Communications & Outreach team has developed several targeted workshops that explore what Oracle means when it talks about user experience, and provides a roadmap into where the Oracle user experience is going. These workshops require non-disclosure agreements, and have been delivered to Oracle sales folks, Oracle partners, Oracle ACE Directors and ACEs, and a few customers. Some of these audience members have been developers or have a technical background; just as many did not. Here’s a breakdown of the kind of training you can get around the Oracle user experience from the OAUX Communications & Outreach team.For Partners: George Papazzian, Principal, Naviscent with Joyce Ohgi, Oracle Oracle Fusion Applications HCM Pre-Sales Seminar:  In concert with Worldwide Alliances  and  Channels under Applications Partner Enablement Director Jonathan Vinoskey’s guidance, the Applications User Experience team delivers a two-day workshop.  Day one focuses on Oracle Fusion Applications HCM and pre-sales strategy, and Day two focuses on positioning and leveraging Oracle’s investment in the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience.  The next workshops will occur on the following dates: December 4-5, 2013 @ Manchester, UK January 29-30, 2014 @ Reston, Virginia February 2014 @ Guadalajara, Mexico (email: Shannon Whiteman) March 11-12, 2014 @ Dubai, United Arab Emirates April 1-2, 2014 @ Chicago, Illinois Partner Advisory Board: A two-day board meeting in the U.S. and U.K. to discuss four main user experience areas for Oracle Fusion Applications: simplicity, visualization & analytics, mobility, & futures. This event is limited to Oracle Diamond Partners, UX bloggers, and key UX influencers and requires legal documentation.  We will be talking about the Oracle applications UX strategy and roadmap. Partner Implementation Training on User Interface: How to Build Great-Looking, Usable Apps:  In this two-day, hands-on workshop built around Oracle’s Application Development Framework, learn how to build desktop and mobile user interfaces and mobile user interfaces based on Oracle’s experience with Fusion Applications. This workshop is for partners with a technology background who are looking for ways to tailor Fusion Applications using ADF, or have built their own custom solutions using ADF. It includes an introduction to UX design patterns and provides tools to build usability-tested UX designs. Nov 5-6, 2013 @ Redwood Shores, CA, USA January 28-29th, 2014 @ Reston, Virginia, USA February 25-26, 2014 @ Guadalajara, Mexico March 9-10, 2014 @ Dubai, United Arab Emirates To register, contact [email protected] Simplified UI Customization & Extensibility:  Pilot workshop:  We will be reviewing the proposed content for communicating the user experience tool kit available with the next release of Oracle Fusion Applications.  Our core focus will be on what toolkit components our system implementors and independent software vendors will need to respond to customer demand, whether they are extending Fusion Applications, or building custom applications, that will need to leverage the simplified UI. Dec 11th, 2013 @ Reading, UK For information: contact [email protected] Private lab tour and demos: Interested in seeing what’s going on in the Apps UX Labs?  If you are headed to the San Francisco Bay Area, let us know. We can arrange a spin through our usability labs at headquarters. OAUX Expo: This open-house forum gives partners a look at what the UX team is working on, and showcases the next-generation user experiences in a demo environment where attendees can see and touch the applications. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For CustomersAngela Johnston, Gozel Aamoth, Teena Singh, and Yen Chan, Oracle Lab tours: See demos of soon-to-be-released products, and take a spin on usability research equipment such as our eye-tracker. Watch this video to get an idea of what you’ll see. Get our newsletter: Learn about newly released products and see where you can meet us at user group conferences. Participate in a feedback session: Join a focus group or customer feedback session to get an early look at user experience designs for the next generation of software, and provide your thoughts on how well it will work. Join the OUAB: The Oracle Usability Advisory Board meets several times a year to discuss trends in the workforce and provide direction on user experience designs. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For Developers (customers, partners, and consultants): Plinio Arbizu, SP Solutions, Richard Bingham, Oracle, Balaji Kamepalli, EiSTechnoogies, Praveen Pillalamarri, EiSTechnologies How to Build Great-Looking, Usable Apps: This workshop is for attendees with a strong technology background who are looking for ways to tailor customer software using ADF. It includes an introduction to UX design patterns and provides tools to build usability-tested UX designs.  See above for dates and times. UX design patterns web site: Cut the length of your project down by months. Use these patterns to build out the task flow you need to develop for your users. The patterns have already been usability-tested and represent the best practices that the Oracle UX research team has found in its studies. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For Oracle Sales Mike Klein, Jeremy Ashley, Brent White, Oracle Contact your local sales person for more information about the Oracle user experience and the training available from the Applications User Experience Communications & Outreach team. See customer-friendly user experience collateral ranging from the new simplified UI in Oracle Fusion Applications Release 7, to E-Business Suite user experience highlights, to Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards user experience highlights.   Receive access to the same pre-sales and implementation training we provide to partners. For Oracle Sales only: Oracle-only training on the Oracle Fusion Applications UX Innovation Sales Kit.

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• Windows 8 Launch&ndash;Why OEM and Retailers Should STFU

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Microsoft has gotten a lot of flack for the Surface from OEM/hardware partners who create Windows-based devices and I’m sure, to an extent, retailers who normally stock and sell Windows-based devices. I mean we all know how this is supposed to work – Microsoft makes the OS, partners make the hardware, retailers sell the hardware. Now Microsoft is breaking the rules by not only offering their own hardware but selling them via online and through their Microsoft branded stores! The thought has been that Microsoft is trying to set a standard for the other hardware companies to reach for. Maybe. I hope, at some level, Microsoft may be covertly responding to frustrations associated with trusting the OEMs and Retailers to deliver on their part of the supply chain. I know as a consumer, I’m very frustrated with the Windows 8 launch. Aside from the Surface sales, there’s nothing happening at the retail level. Let me back up and explain. Over the weekend I visited a number of stores in hopes of trying out various Windows 8 devices. Out of three retailers (Staples, Best Buy, and Future Shop), not *one* met my expectations. Let me be honest with you Staples, I never really have high expectations from your computer department. If I need paper or pens, whatever, but computers – you’re not the top of my list for price or selection. Still, considering you flaunted Win 8 devices in your flyer I expected *something* – some sign of effort that you took the Windows 8 launch seriously. As I entered the 1910 Pembina Highway location in Winnipeg, there was nothing – no signage, no banners – nothing that would suggest Windows 8 had even launched. I made my way to the laptops. I had to play with each machine to determine which ones were running Windows 8. There wasn’t anything on the placards that made it obvious which were Windows 8 machines and which ones were Windows 7. Likewise, there was no easy way to identify the touch screen laptop (the HP model) from the others without physically touching the screen to verify. Horrible experience. In the same mall as the Staples I mentioned above, there’s a Future Shop. Surely they would be more on the ball. I walked in to the 1910 Pembina Highway location and immediately realized I would not get a better experience. Except for the sign by the front door mentioning Windows 8, there was *nothing* in the computer department pointing you to the Windows 8 devices. Like in Staples, the Win 8 laptops were mixed in with the Win 7 ones and there was nothing notable calling out which ones were running Win 8. I happened to hit up the St. James Street location today, thinking since its a busier store they must have more options. To their credit, they did have two staff members decked out in Windows 8 shirts and who were helping a customer understand Windows 8. But otherwise, there was nothing highlighting the Windows 8 devices and they were again mixed in with the rest of the Win 7 machines. Finally, we have the St. James Street Best Buy location here in Winnipeg. I’m sure Best Buy will have their act together. Nope, not even close. Same story as the others: minimal signage (there was a sign as you walked in with a link to this schedule of demo days), Windows 8 hardware mixed with the rest of the PC offerings, and no visible call-outs identifying which were Win 8 based. This meant that, like Future Shop and Staples, if you wanted to know which machine had Windows 8 you had to go and scrutinize each machine. Also, there was nothing identifying which ones were touch based and which were not. Just Another Day… To these retailers, it seemed that the Windows 8 launch was just another day, with another product to add to the showroom floor. Meanwhile, Apple has their dedicated areas *in all three stores*. It was dead simple to find where the Apple products were compared to the Windows 8 products. No wonder Microsoft is starting to push their own retail stores. No wonder Microsoft is trying to funnel orders through them instead of relying on these bloated retail big box stores who obviously can’t manage a product launch. It’s Not Just The Retailers… Remember when the Acer CEO, Founder, and President of Computer Global Operations all weighed in on how Microsoft releasing the Surface would have a “huge negative impact for the ecosystem and other brands may take a negative reaction”? Also remember the CEO stating “[making hardware] is not something you are good at so please think twice”? Well the launch day has come and gone, and so far Microsoft is the only one that delivered on having hardware available on the October 26th date. Oh sure, there are laptops running Windows 8 – but all in one desktop PCs? I’ve only seen one or two! And tablets are *non existent*, with some showing an early to late November availability on Best Buy’s website! So while the retailers could be doing more to make it easier to find Windows 8 devices, the manufacturers could help by *getting devices into stores*! That’s supposedly something that these companies are good at, according to the Acer CEO. So Here’s What the Retailers and Manufacturers Need To Do… Get Product Out The pivotal timeframe will be now to the end of November. We need to start seeing all these fantastic pieces of hardware ship – including the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro, the Acer Iconia, the Asus TAICHI 21, and the sexy Samsung Series 7 27” desktop. It’s not enough to see product announcements, we need to see actual devices. Make It Easy For Customers To Find Win8 Devices You want to make it easy to sell these things? Make it easy for people to find them! Have staff on hand that really know how these devices run and what can be done with them. Don’t just have a single demo day, have people who can demo it every day! Make It Easy to See the Features There’s touch screen desktops, touch screen laptops, tablets, non-touch laptops, etc. People need to easily find the features for each machine. If I’m looking for a touch-laptop, I shouldn’t need to sift through all the non-touch laptops to find them – at the least, I need to quickly be able to see which ones are touch. I feel silly even typing this because this should be retail 101 and I have no retail background (but I do have an extensive background as a customer). In Summary… Microsoft launching the Surface and selling them through their own channels isn’t slapping its OEM and retail partners in the face; its slapping them to wake the hell up and stop coasting through Windows launch events like they don’t matter. Unless I see some improvements from vendors and retailers in November, I may just hold onto my money for a Surface Pro even if I have to wait until early 2013. Your move OEM/Retailers. *Update – While my experience has been in Winnipeg, similar experiences have been voiced from colleagues in Calgary and Edmonton.

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• The Art of Productivity

  - by dwahlin

  Getting things done has always been a challenge regardless of gender, age, race, skill, or job position. No matter how hard some people try, they end up procrastinating tasks until the last minute. Some people simply focus better when they know they’re out of time and can’t procrastinate any longer. How many times have you put off working on a term paper in school until the very last minute? With only a few hours left your mental energy and focus seem to kick in to high gear especially as you realize that you either get the paper done now or risk failing. It’s amazing how a little pressure can turn into a motivator and allow our minds to focus on a given task. Some people seem to specialize in procrastinating just about everything they do while others tend to be the “doers” who get a lot done and ultimately rise up the ladder at work. What’s the difference between these types of people? Is it pure laziness or are other factors at play? I think that some people are certainly more motivated than others, but I also think a lot of it is based on the process that “doers” tend to follow - whether knowingly or unknowingly. While I’ve certainly fought battles with procrastination, I’ve always had a knack for being able to get a lot done in a relatively short amount of time. I think a lot of my “get it done” attitude goes back to the the strong work ethic my parents instilled in me at a young age. I remember my dad saying, “You need to learn to work hard!” when I was around 5 years old. I remember that moment specifically because I was on a tractor with him the first time I heard it while he was trying to move some large rocks into a pile. The tractor was big but so were the rocks and my dad had to balance the tractor perfectly so that it didn’t tip forward too far. It was challenging work and somewhat tedious but my dad finished the task and taught me a few important lessons along the way including persistence, the importance of having a skill, and getting the job done right without skimping along the way. In this post I’m going to list a few of the techniques and processes I follow that I hope may be beneficial to others. I blogged about the general concept back in 2009 but thought I’d share some updated information and lessons learned since then. Most of the ideas that follow came from learning and refining my daily work process over the years. However, since most of the ideas are common sense (at least in my opinion), I suspect they can be found in other productivity processes that are out there. Let’s start off with one of the most important yet simple tips: Start Each Day with a List. Start Each Day with a List What are you planning to get done today? Do you keep track of everything in your head or rely on your calendar? While most of us think that we’re pretty good at managing “to do” lists strictly in our head you might be surprised at how affective writing out lists can be. By writing out tasks you’re forced to focus on the most important tasks to accomplish that day, commit yourself to those tasks, and have an easy way to track what was supposed to get done and what actually got done. Start every morning by making a list of specific tasks that you want to accomplish throughout the day. I’ll even go so far as to fill in times when I’d like to work on tasks if I have a lot of meetings or other events tying up my calendar on a given day. I’m not a big fan of using paper since I type a lot faster than I write (plus I write like a 3rd grader according to my wife), so I use the Sticky Notes feature available in Windows. Here’s an example of yesterday’s sticky note: What do you add to your list? That’s the subject of the next tip. Focus on Small Tasks It’s no secret that focusing on small, manageable tasks is more effective than trying to focus on large and more vague tasks. When you make your list each morning only add tasks that you can accomplish within a given time period. For example, if I only have 30 minutes blocked out to work on an article I don’t list “Write Article”. If I do that I’ll end up wasting 30 minutes stressing about how I’m going to get the article done in 30 minutes and ultimately get nothing done. Instead, I’ll list something like “Write Introductory Paragraphs for Article”. The next day I may add, “Write first section of article” or something that’s small and manageable – something I’m confident that I can get done. You’ll find that once you’ve knocked out several smaller tasks it’s easy to continue completing others since you want to keep the momentum going. In addition to keeping my tasks focused and small, I also make a conscious effort to limit my list to 4 or 5 tasks initially. I’ve found that if I list more than 5 tasks I feel a bit overwhelmed which hurts my productivity. It’s easy to add additional tasks as you complete others and you get the added benefit of that confidence boost of knowing that you’re being productive and getting things done as you remove tasks and add others. Getting Started is the Hardest (Yet Easiest) Part I’ve always found that getting started is the hardest part and one of the biggest contributors to procrastination. Getting started working on tasks is a lot like getting a large rock pushed to the bottom of a hill. It’s difficult to get the rock rolling at first, but once you manage to get it rocking some it’s really easy to get it rolling on its way to the bottom. As an example, I’ve written 100s of articles for technical magazines over the years and have really struggled with the initial introductory paragraphs. Keep in mind that these are the paragraphs that don’t really add that much value (in my opinion anyway). They introduce the reader to the subject matter and nothing more. What a waste of time for me to sit there stressing about how to start the article. On more than one occasion I’ve spent more than an hour trying to come up with 2-3 paragraphs of text.  Talk about a productivity killer! Whether you’re struggling with a writing task, some code for a project, an email, or other tasks, jumping in without thinking too much is the best way to get started I’ve found. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have an overall plan when jumping into a task, but on some occasions you’ll find that if you simply jump into the task and stop worrying about doing everything perfectly that things will flow more smoothly. For my introductory paragraph problem I give myself 5 minutes to write out some general concepts about what I know the article will cover and then spend another 10-15 minutes going back and refining that information. That way I actually have some ideas to work with rather than a blank sheet of paper. If I still find myself struggling I’ll write the rest of the article first and then circle back to the introductory paragraphs once I’m done. To sum this tip up: Jump into a task without thinking too hard about it. It’s better to to get the rock at the top of the hill rocking some than doing nothing at all. You can always go back and refine your work.   Learn a Productivity Technique and Stick to It There are a lot of different productivity programs and seminars out there being sold by companies. I’ve always laughed at how much money people spend on some of these motivational programs/seminars because I think that being productive isn’t that hard if you create a re-useable set of steps and processes to follow. That’s not to say that some of these programs/seminars aren’t worth the money of course because I know they’ve definitely benefited some people that have a hard time getting things done and staying focused. One of the best productivity techniques I’ve ever learned is called the “Pomodoro Technique” and it’s completely free. This technique is an extremely simple way to manage your time without having to remember a bunch of steps, color coding mechanisms, or other processes. The technique was originally developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 80s and can be implemented with a simple timer. In a nutshell here’s how the technique works: Pick a task to work on Set the timer to 25 minutes and work on the task Once the timer rings record your time Take a 5 minute break Repeat the process Here’s why the technique works well for me: It forces me to focus on a single task for 25 minutes. In the past I had no time goal in mind and just worked aimlessly on a task until I got interrupted or bored. 25 minutes is a small enough chunk of time for me to stay focused. Any distractions that may come up have to wait until after the timer goes off. If the distraction is really important then I stop the timer and record my time up to that point. When the timer is running I act as if I only have 25 minutes total for the task (like you’re down to the last 25 minutes before turning in your term paper….frantically working to get it done) which helps me stay focused and turns into a “beat the clock” type of game. It’s actually kind of fun if you treat it that way and really helps me focus on a the task at hand. I automatically know how much time I’m spending on a given task (more on this later) by using this technique. I know that I have 5 minutes after each pomodoro (the 25 minute sprint) to waste on anything I’d like including visiting a website, stepping away from the computer, etc. which also helps me stay focused when the 25 minute timer is counting down. I use this technique so much that I decided to build a program for Windows 8 called Pomodoro Focus (I plan to blog about how it was built in a later post). It’s a Windows Store application that allows people to track tasks, productive time spent on tasks, interruption time experienced while working on a given task, and the number of pomodoros completed. If a time estimate is given when the task is initially created, Pomodoro Focus will also show the task completion percentage. I like it because it allows me to track my tasks, time spent on tasks (very useful in the consulting world), and even how much time I wasted on tasks (pressing the pause button while working on a task starts the interruption timer). I recently added a new feature that charts productive and interruption time for tasks since I wanted to see how productive I was from week to week and month to month. A few screenshots from the Pomodoro Focus app are shown next, I had a lot of fun building it and use it myself to as I work on tasks.   There are certainly many other productivity techniques and processes out there (and a slew of books describing them), but the Pomodoro Technique has been the simplest and most effective technique I’ve ever come across for staying focused and getting things done.   Persistence is Key Getting things done is great but one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in life is that persistence is key especially when you’re trying to get something done that at times seems insurmountable. Small tasks ultimately lead to larger tasks getting accomplished, however, it’s not all roses along the way as some of the smaller tasks may come with their own share of bumps and bruises that lead to discouragement about the end goal and whether or not it is worth achieving at all. I’ve been on several long-term projects over my career as a software developer (I have one personal project going right now that fits well here) and found that repeating, “Persistence is the key!” over and over to myself really helps. Not every project turns out to be successful, but if you don’t show persistence through the hard times you’ll never know if you succeeded or not. Likewise, if you don’t persistently stick to the process of creating a daily list, follow a productivity process, etc. then the odds of consistently staying productive aren’t good.   Track Your Time How much time do you actually spend working on various tasks? If you don’t currently track time spent answering emails, on phone calls, and working on various tasks then you might be surprised to find out that a task that you thought was going to take you 30 minutes ultimately ended up taking 2 hours. If you don’t track the time you spend working on tasks how can you expect to learn from your mistakes, optimize your time better, and become more productive? That’s another reason why I like the Pomodoro Technique – it makes it easy to stay focused on tasks while also tracking how much time I’m working on a given task.   Eliminate Distractions I blogged about this final tip several years ago but wanted to bring it up again. If you want to be productive (and ultimately successful at whatever you’re doing) then you can’t waste a lot of time playing games or on Twitter, Facebook, or other time sucking websites. If you see an article you’re interested in that has no relation at all to the tasks you’re trying to accomplish then bookmark it and read it when you have some spare time (such as during a pomodoro break). Fighting the temptation to check your friends’ status updates on Facebook? Resist the urge and realize how much those types of activities are hurting your productivity and taking away from your focus. I’ll admit that eliminating distractions is still tough for me personally and something I have to constantly battle. But, I’ve made a conscious decision to cut back on my visits and updates to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other sites. Sure, my Klout score has suffered as a result lately, but does anyone actually care about those types of scores aside from your online “friends” (few of whom you’ve actually met in person)? :-) Ultimately it comes down to self-discipline and how badly you want to be productive and successful in your career, life goals, hobbies, or whatever you’re working on. Rather than having your homepage take you to a time wasting news site, game site, social site, picture site, or others, how about adding something like the following as your homepage? Every time your browser opens you’ll see a personal message which helps keep you on the right track. You can download my ubber-sophisticated homepage here if interested. Summary Is there a single set of steps that if followed can ultimately lead to productivity? I don’t think so since one size has never fit all. Every person is different, works in their own unique way, and has their own set of motivators, distractions, and more. While I certainly don’t consider myself to be an expert on the subject of productivity, I do think that if you learn what steps work best for you and gradually refine them over time that you can come up with a personal productivity process that can serve you well. Productivity is definitely an “art” that anyone can learn with a little practice and persistence. You’ve seen some of the steps that I personally like to follow and I hope you find some of them useful in boosting your productivity. If you have others you use please leave a comment. I’m always looking for ways to improve.

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• Stored Procedures with SSRS? Hmm… not so much

  - by Rob Farley

  Little Bobby Tables’ mother says you should always sanitise your data input. Except that I think she’s wrong. The SQL Injection aspect is for another post, where I’ll show you why I think SQL Injection is the same kind of attack as many other attacks, such as the old buffer overflow, but here I want to have a bit of a whinge about the way that some people sanitise data input, and even have a whinge about people who insist on using stored procedures for SSRS reports. Let me say that again, in case you missed it the first time: I want to have a whinge about people who insist on using stored procedures for SSRS reports. Let’s look at the data input sanitisation aspect – except that I’m going to call it ‘parameter validation’. I’m talking about code that looks like this: create procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     /* First check that @eomdate is a valid date */     if isdate(@eomdate) != 1     begin         select 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage;         return;     end     /* Then check that time has passed since @eomdate */     if datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5     begin         select 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage;         return;     end         /* If those checks have succeeded, return the data */     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)         and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     order by SalesPersonID; end Notice that the code checks that a date has been entered. Seriously??!! This must only be to check for NULL values being passed in, because anything else would have to be a valid datetime to avoid an error. The other check is maybe fair enough, but I still don’t like it. The two problems I have with this stored procedure are the result sets and the small fact that the stored procedure even exists in the first place. But let’s consider the first one of these problems for starters. I’ll get to the second one in a moment. If you read Jes Borland (@grrl_geek)’s recent post about returning multiple result sets in Reporting Services, you’ll be aware that Reporting Services doesn’t support multiple results sets from a single query. And when it says ‘single query’, it includes ‘stored procedure call’. It’ll only handle the first result set that comes back. But that’s okay – we have RETURN statements, so our stored procedure will only ever return a single result set.  Sometimes that result set might contain a single field called ErrorMessage, but it’s still only one result set. Except that it’s not okay, because Reporting Services needs to know what fields to expect. Your report needs to hook into your fields, so SSRS needs to have a way to get that information. For stored procs, it uses an option called FMTONLY. When Reporting Services tries to figure out what fields are going to be returned by a query (or stored procedure call), it doesn’t want to have to run the whole thing. That could take ages. (Maybe it’s seen some of the stored procedures I’ve had to deal with over the years!) So it turns on FMTONLY before it makes the call (and turns it off again afterwards). FMTONLY is designed to be able to figure out the shape of the output, without actually running the contents. It’s very useful, you might think. set fmtonly on exec dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson '20030401'; set fmtonly off Without the FMTONLY lines, this stored procedure returns a result set that has three columns and fourteen rows. But with FMTONLY turned on, those rows don’t come back. But what I do get back hurts Reporting Services. It doesn’t run the stored procedure at all. It just looks for anything that could be returned and pushes out a result set in that shape. Despite the fact that I’ve made sure that the logic will only ever return a single result set, the FMTONLY option kills me by returning three of them. It would have been much better to push these checks down into the query itself. alter procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     order by SalesPersonID; end Now if we run it with FMTONLY turned on, we get the single result set back. But let’s consider the execution plan when we pass in an invalid date. First let’s look at one that returns data. I’ve got a semi-useful index in place on OrderDate, which includes the SalesPersonID and TotalDue fields. It does the job, despite a hefty Sort operation. …compared to one that uses a future date: You might notice that the estimated costs are similar – the Index Seek is still 28%, the Sort is still 71%. But the size of that arrow coming out of the Index Seek is a whole bunch smaller. The coolest thing here is what’s going on with that Index Seek. Let’s look at some of the properties of it. Glance down it with me… Estimated CPU cost of 0.0005728, 387 estimated rows, estimated subtree cost of 0.0044385, ForceSeek false, Number of Executions 0. That’s right – it doesn’t run. So much for reading plans right-to-left... The key is the Filter on the left of it. It has a Startup Expression Predicate in it, which means that it doesn’t call anything further down the plan (to the right) if the predicate evaluates to false. Using this method, we can make sure that our stored procedure contains a single query, and therefore avoid any problems with multiple result sets. If we wanted, we could always use UNION ALL to make sure that we can return an appropriate error message. alter procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales, /*Placeholder: */ '' as ErrorMessage     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     /* Now include the error messages */     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage     where isdate(@eomdate) != 1     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage     where datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5     order by SalesPersonID; end But still I don’t like it, because it’s now a stored procedure with a single query. And I don’t like stored procedures that should be functions. That’s right – I think this should be a function, and SSRS should call the function. And I apologise to those of you who are now planning a bonfire for me. Guy Fawkes’ night has already passed this year, so I think you miss out. (And I’m not going to remind you about when the PASS Summit is in 2012.) create function dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) returns table as return (     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales, '' as ErrorMessage     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage     where isdate(@eomdate) != 1     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage     where datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5 ); We’ve had to lose the ORDER BY – but that’s fine, as that’s a client thing anyway. We can have our reports leverage this stored query still, but we’re recognising that it’s a query, not a procedure. A procedure is designed to DO stuff, not just return data. We even get entries in sys.columns that confirm what the shape of the result set actually is, which makes sense, because a table-valued function is the right mechanism to return data. And we get so much more flexibility with this. If you haven’t seen the simplification stuff that I’ve preached on before, jump over to http://bit.ly/SimpleRob and watch the video of when I broke a microphone and nearly fell off the stage in Wales. You’ll see the impact of being able to have a simplifiable query. You can also read the procedural functions post I wrote recently, if you didn’t follow the link from a few paragraphs ago. So if we want the list of SalesPeople that made any kind of sales in a given month, we can do something like: select SalesPersonID from dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomonth) order by SalesPersonID; This doesn’t need to look up the TotalDue field, which makes a simpler plan. select * from dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomonth) where SalesPersonID is not null order by SalesPersonID; This one can avoid having to do the work on the rows that don’t have a SalesPersonID value, pushing the predicate into the Index Seek rather than filtering the results that come back to the report. If we had joins involved, we might see some of those being simplified out. We also get the ability to include query hints in individual reports. We shift from having a single-use stored procedure to having a reusable stored query – and isn’t that one of the main points of modularisation? Stored procedures in Reporting Services are just a bit limited for my liking. They’re useful in plenty of ways, but if you insist on using stored procedures all the time rather that queries that use functions – that’s rubbish. @rob_farley

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• O2 Mobile broadband - VPN problems

  - by NT

  My O2 dongle seems to connect to my Work VPN only after 10.30pm??? I cant understand why it doesnt work during the day, same laptop, same connection settings, same location? Is it possible the provider limits VPN ports or service during the day?

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