BBC NEWS | Business | Computer knowledge 'undervalued

 

TOP BUSINESS SKILLS

1. Team working and interpersonal skills

2. Initiative

3. Analyzing and problem solving

4. Verbal communication

5. Personal planning and organizing

6. Flexibility

7. IT skills

 

Source: Microsoft

BBC NEWS | Business | Computer knowledge 'undervalued

SQL Q&A: Inside Clustering, Mysterious Hangs, the SA Account, and More -- TechNet Magazine, July 2007

 

Are you upgrading from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005?

 If so, make sure you run DBCC UPDATEUSAGE right after your databases are upgraded.

DBCC UPDATEUSAGE reports and corrects pages and row count inaccuracies in the catalog views. These inaccuracies need to be corrected because they may cause incorrect space usage reports to be returned by the sp_spaceused system stored procedure. In SQL Server 2005, these values are always maintained correctly, so these databases should never experience incorrect counts. However, databases upgraded to SQL Server 2005 may contain invalid counts, so you should run DBCC UPDATEUSAGE after upgrading.

Here's how DBCC UPDATEUSAGE works. It corrects the rows, used pages, reserved pages, leaf pages, and data page counts for each partition in a table or index. If there are no inaccuracies in the system tables, DBCC UPDATEUSAGE returns no data. If inaccuracies are found and corrected and you have not used WITH NO_INFOMSGS, DBCC UPDATEUSAGE returns the rows and columns being updated in the system tables.

DBCC UPDATEUSAGE can also be used to synchronize space-usage counters. Because DBCC UPDATEUSAGE can take some time to run on large tables or databases, it should typically be used only when you suspect incorrect values are being returned by sp_spaceused. Note that sp_spaceused accepts an optional parameter to run DBCC UPDATEUSAGE before returning space information for the table or index.

DBCC CHECKDB has been enhanced in SQL Server 2005 to detect when page or row counts become negative. When negatives are detected, DBCC CHECKDB will output a warning and a recommendation to run DBCC UPDATEUSAGE to address the issue. Although it may appear as if upgrading the database to SQL Server 2005 caused this problem, be assured that the invalid counts existed before the upgrade procedure. As an example, here's how you would update page or row counts or both for all objects in the current database. The following command specifies 0 for the database name and DBCC UPDATEUSAGE reports updated information for the current database: DBCC UPDATEUSAGE (0); GO To update page or row counts or both for, say, AdventureWorks, and also to suppress informational messages, you would run a command similar the following, which specifies AdventureWorks as the database name and then suppresses all informational messages: USE AdventureWorks; GO DBCC UPDATEUSAGE ('AdventureWorks') WITH NO_INFOMSGS; GO For more information, search for DBCC UpdateUsage in SQL Server Books Online.

SQL Q&A: Inside Clustering, Mysterious Hangs, the SA Account, and More -- TechNet Magazine, July 2007

Null Object Design Pattern

Always wondered what would be a better way to check for the null objects. This seems pretty much what I was looking for.

Null Object Design Pattern

Blog event: The 31 Days of ReSharper

ReSharper is a Visual Studio add-in that adds refactorings (many more than VS 2005 ships with), code cleanup, and a bunch of other conveniences. I tried downloading it a couple of years ago, opened the project we'd been working on, and it crashed. A lot has changed since then.

Blog event: The 31 Days of ReSharper

How to Write a Custom Web Event Provider for ASP.NET 2.0

In this article Keyvan shows the process to write a custom web event provider for new Health Monitoring feature in ASP.NET 2.0 and creates a custom XML provider as a sample...

Link to How to Write a Custom Web Event Provider for ASP.NET 2.0

C# 2.0 Iterators

Published: 11 Oct 2006
By: mosessaur
Iterators provide a simpler way to create classes that can be used with the foreach statement without implementing the IEnumerable and IEnumerator interfaces.

Link to C# 2.0 Iterators

Clint Covington: Software design, Microsoft Office Access : Resume best practices revealed

I could make the claim that this guy is way too biased about what he says and only said all that to boost his wife's business. Trust me guys, at the end of the day all that matters really is how much skilled you are. 

Hey, you could get the job with those flashy cover letters and resumes, but honestly, if you don't know jack about the job, you would be switching to something else soon.

Link to Clint Covington: Software design, Microsoft Office Access : Resume best practices revealed

Command Line SMTP Mailer for Windows

 BMail simply rocks.

The other thing i use is just add Vbs script and launch it:

 

Set Msg = CreateObject("CDO.Message")

With Msg

.To = "you@yourdomain.com"
.From = "me@mydomain.com"
.Subject = "Hello"
.TextBody = "Just wanted to say hi."
.Send

End With

MsgBox "Script Complete"

Link to Command Line SMTP Mailer for Windows

Rico Mariani's Performance Tidbits : Performance Quiz #1 (of a series?)

 

Recently there was a discussion on one of our internal email aliases in which this problem came up. I though it was an interesting problem so I posed this Quiz to assorted people I work with to see what kinds of things they would say.

Considering these three options:

Option 1:

sw.WriteLine(subject + ": " + message);

Option 2:

sw.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", subject, message);

Option 3:

sw.Write(subject);
sw.Write(": ");
sw.WriteLine(message);

Answer these questions:

Q1. Which of these choices offers the best performance?
Q2: Can you characterize the memory usage of each of these?
Q3: Which would the performance team generally recommend, and why?
Q4: What special factors might alter this recommendation?
Q5: What did you have do assume about "sw" to answer the question?

 

For answers check the link below:

Link to Rico Mariani's Performance Tidbits : Performance Quiz #1 (of a series?)

Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

 Here is something to improve your grammar.

Link to Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Enterprise Library 3.0 - Visual Studio-Integrated Configuration Editor

Another addition tot he Enterprise Library 3.0 that is just great to have. 

Link to Enterprise Library 3.0 - Visual Studio-Integrated Configuration Editor

C# LINQ to SQL Chat Dec 12, 2006 - DLINQ - Microsoft O/R Mapper

 

What is the key difference between ADO.NET Entities and LINQ 2 SQL?

A: LINQ to SQL is an ORM over your relational database schema plus some mappings. LINQ to Entities is an ORM over a conceptual object-less model (ERM) that is a mapping over your relational database schema.

Source: C# LINQ to SQL Chat Dec 12, 2006 - DLINQ - Microsoft O/R Mapper

ADO.NET Entity Framework and Object Services Tutorial - Entity Data Model

Absolutely great stuff!

"The Object Services in the ADO.NET Entity Framework is another solution for persisting entities to your database."

Source: ADO.NET Entity Framework and Object Services Tutorial - Entity Data Model

Derik Whittaker : Writing Unit Tests, a simple multi-step process to getting started

 Derik Whittake describes how to write tests for projects that have "so much existing code".

Steps include:

  1. Survey your code base.
  2. Create an action plan.
  3. Execute your action plan.
  4. Reflect on what you have accomplished.
  5. Start the process over.

For more insight into these steps hear over to:

Link to Derik Whittaker : Writing Unit Tests, a simple multi-step process to getting started

CSS Friendly Control Adapters

Project Description

The CSS Friendly Control Adapters kit (for ASP.Net 2.0) provides pre-built control adapters that you can easily use to generate CSS-friendly markup from some of the more commonly used ASP.NET controls.

Ref: CSS Friendly Control Adapters

Roland Weigelt : Speeding up the C# Source Code Editor

 Cool way to speed up your C# source code editor.

Source: Roland Weigelt : Speeding up the C# Source Code Editor

Roland Weigelt : SonicFileFinder 1.8 Released

 

Great add-in for finding files in vS2005. Check it out.

Link to Roland Weigelt : SonicFileFinder 1.8 Released

Terminals (Remote Desktop Manager tool - Freeware)

 

I have been using RoyalTS for a while to manage all the desktop connections to various servers that i have to keep shortcut of. Here is one more, perhaps a better one that i just found out about.

 

Check it out at the following link: 

Link to Terminals

NetObjectives Pattern Repository

Good place to learn and share your knowledge about Design patterns. 

 

Link to patternrepository

Download details: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 IDE Enhancements

I was unable to install this on my machine at home and at office. Both are completely different machines. Has anyone been able to install this successfully after installing sp1?

 

 

Link to Download details: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 IDE Enhancements

ScottGu's Blog : JSON Hijacking and How ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Avoids these Attacks

 Good Read.

Link to ScottGu's Blog : JSON Hijacking and How AS

del.icio.us tags:

P.NET AJAX 1.0 Avoids these Attacks

Making Sense: Making Windows Live Writer work with Blogger Beta

Test post from Live Writer using the method described in the link below. Seems to work for me. yay! 

Link to Making Sense: Making Windows Live Writer work with Blogger Beta

Books list for Developers

Great list of books every developer should read.

“Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professionalism,” ACM/IEEE-CS
Software Project Survival Guide, Steve McConnell
Mastering the Requirements Process, Robertson and Robertson
Mythical Man-Month, Fred Brooks
Peopleware, DeMarco and Lister
Rapid Development, Steve McConnell
201 Principles of Software Development, Alan Davis
Code Complete, Steve McConnell
Applying UML & Patterns 2nd Ed, Craig Larman
Programming Pearls 2nd Edition, Jon Bentley
Refactoring, Martin Fowler
Writing Effective Use Cases, Cockburn
Object Oriented Analysis and Design, Grady Booch
Design Patterns, Erich Gamma et al
Conceptual Blockbusting, James Adams
“The Humble Programmer,” Edsger Dijkstra

Ramadan - What is it?

  Ramadan is one of the most important and holy months in the Islamic calendar. It is a time of fasting, prayer, and spiritual reflection fo...