Technology Rants

An INSERT EXEC statement cannot be nested

2010-09-15T10:32:00.001-04:00

I ran into the following problem: if a procedure is using INSERT EXEC, and you try to INSERT EXEC that procedure, you get the following error message:An INSERT EXEC statement cannot be nested.Example:USE MyDBGOCREATE PROC dbo.Proc1AS SELECT 1GOCREATE PROC dbo.Proc2AS SET NOCOUNT ON CREATE TABLE #t (value INT) INSERT INTO #t EXEC Proc1 SELECT * FROM #tGOCREATE TABLE #results (value INT)INSERT

Exporting SQL Server Procedures and Functions to Files

2009-02-10T11:17:00.003-05:00

Sometimes it is necessary to export all or some of the stored procedures and functions in a database to files (one file per procedure). This is useful for example if you want to place all your database scripts under source control.The bcp utility shipped with SQL Server can help. The following query generates one bcp command line per procedure. All commands can then be copied to a batch file and

Generate INSERT statements from SQL Server table data

2008-01-18T17:28:00.001-05:00

It is often necessary to copy data between two tables (for example between staging and production databases). SQL Server makes this task rather complicated (you have to resort to export/import). In MySQL it is possible to generate INSERT statements for all the records in a table, and some SQL Server client tools (such as the somewhat immature but excellent Toad) also do this.The really low cost

SQL Server: Executing Jobs Synchronously

2007-07-25T15:46:00.001-04:00

SQL Server jobs can be started from T-SQL using msdb.dbo.sp_start_job: EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_start_job @job_name = 'My job name' This call however will return immediately (i.e. the job executes asynchronously). Sometimes it is desirable for the job to be executed synchronously. The following procedure accomplishes this. CREATE PROCEDURE execute_job_synchronously @jobID UNIQUEIDENTIFIER, @jobName

PONG

2007-07-05T13:08:00.001-04:00

Surface Computing

2007-06-26T15:48:00.000-04:00

Cool Microsoft Surface Computing demo http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid932579976?bclid=932553050&bctid=933742930

Cool Phone Hacks

2007-06-26T00:58:00.001-04:00

I came across these neat services (free during beta testing) on http://4hourworkweek.com. http://jott.com uses voice recognition to transcribe your spoken message into an SMS or email. The way they put it, "send SMS with your voice." Great for emailing yourself reminders, too. http://pinger.com lets you send voicemail to people without calling them. Perfect for late night messages or

The Visit

2007-06-26T00:52:00.001-04:00

I thought this was really cool--a sign of things to come in our society. Crowd-financed movies... (Maybe there's hope for humanity after all.) I look forward to the day when blockbusters are financed with lunch money by kids who vote on what happens to Spidey in the next installment. (There's no hope for humanity.) http://thevisitmovie.blogspot.com/

The web is officially getting scary

2007-06-23T10:47:00.001-04:00

Can you guess guess how much information about YOU is scattered on the web? http://www.zoominfo.com/

Determining the next identity value for a table

2007-06-08T12:12:00.000-04:00

SELECT IDENT_CURRENT('Table1') + IDENT_INCR('Table1')Also:DBCC CHECKIDENT ('table_name', NORESEED)To reseed the identity value:DBCC CHECKIDENT ('table_name', RESEED, 10000)

Windows Vista Gets Flak

2006-09-09T18:30:00.000-04:00

http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/07/technology/Reality_check_Vista.biz2/index.htm?cnn=yes I do agree with one thing in this article: XP SP2 is a fine OS. The reality is that soon enough, as more applications move online, what operating system you are running will be largely irrelevant. It's all in the browser.Did I mention I loved Gmail? And Google Calendar? And Google Spreadsheets? Once Google Word

How to get the current server date and time inside a User Defined Function on SQL Server

2006-01-31T10:22:00.000-05:00

User Defined Function cannot contain calls to non-deterministic functions, so a call to GETDATE() cannot be executed inside a function. To get the current time and date, this is usually good enough: SELECT MAX(last_batch) FROM master.dbo.sysprocesses

Alternating Row Background Colors in Reporting Services

2006-01-20T19:46:00.000-05:00

By default the BackgroundColor property of the row is "Transparent." To alternate colors, change to an Expression like this one:=IIF(RowNumber(Nothing) Mod 2,"Transparent","LightGray")

Ultimate Tool List

2005-07-06T17:10:00.000-04:00

Definitely worth checking out! Take the time to read through the list, chances are you'll find more than a few useful tools. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2005UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolList.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottsListOfUltimateVisualStudioNETAddIns.aspx

Case-sensitive Comparisons in SQL Server

2005-06-20T10:58:00.000-04:00

Interesting article illustrating various ways to perform case-sensitive searches in SQL Serverhttp://vyaskn.tripod.com/case_sensitive_search_in_sql_server.htm

How to Crack WEP

2005-05-13T16:38:00.000-04:00

Interesting step-by-step guide to cracking WEP and identifying WEP keys http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Sections-article118.php

Charts in Web Applications with .NET

2005-03-16T10:32:00.000-05:00

Microsoft profides "free" (if you have an Office license) OWC (Office Web Components). They can be used, among other things, to generate charts on the web server and stream them directly to the client as JPG or GIF. Cool stuff. http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/owc11article.asp

Complete List of .NET Framework Classes

2005-02-28T12:39:00.000-05:00

I've been looking for a way to quickly get an overview of all classes available in the .NET framework, since there are many I am not even aware of. The links below come closest to what I was looking for: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/cpref_start.aspthe official reference, broken down by namespace; good (of course), but a little difficult to

ASP.NET Site-wide Page Templates

2005-02-15T05:50:00.000-05:00

Until now I always used top and bottom controls. It felt wrong, so I did a bit of searching to see what else is out there. ASP.NET 2.0 solved the problem, but until then here's a good solution: http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/18011/0/page/1

Multiple Event Handlers in JavaScript (daisy-chaining event handlers)

2005-01-15T15:05:00.000-05:00

@page Section1 {size: 8.5in 11.0in; margin: 1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; } P.MsoNormal { FONT-SIZE: 12pt; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman" } LI.MsoNormal { FONT-SIZE: 12pt; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman" } DIV.MsoNormal { FONT-SIZE: 12pt; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman" }

VS.net IDE Tips

2005-01-12T06:32:00.000-05:00

http://www.codeproject.com/tips/VSnetIDETipsAndTricks.asp

GUID / UUID Algorithm

2005-01-07T13:32:00.000-05:00

I always wanted to know how the Microsoft GUIDs (globally unique identifier) used for class identification in the registry and other purposes are generated. Here's a spec:

EOM

2005-01-02T22:47:00.000-05:00

Yahoo! Finance Weekend The Problem: Your inbox is overflowing with e-mails from colleagues that say nothing more than "got it" or "OK." The Fix: Introduce your workplace to EOM, shorthand for "end of message." Slapping these three letters onto the end of an e-mail message is a signal to the recipient that the exchange is complete and he or she doesn't need to send a reply. Usage of EOM has

Good .NET / Java FTP Component (free / open source)

2004-12-29T17:31:00.000-05:00

http://www.enterprisedt.com

Mission to Mars: Staying Sane

2004-12-17T15:07:00.000-05:00

http://wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/sane.html With all the virtual reality technology we are developing, it shouldn't be hard to set up virtual "social environments" for the astronauts. Communication delays would probably make it impractical for live video conferencing or virual presence systems, but simulated environments with artificial intelligence may be the answer. Just don a headmount

HOWTO: Installing Windows XP on a computer with SATA drives and no floppy drive

2004-10-29T09:31:00.000-04:00

Problem: Windows XP does not have built-in support for SATA drives, it needs drivers from the controller manufacturer. When you run the installation, it complains there are no hard drives in the computer. Solution 1: If Windows is already installed, put the new XP CD in and run the installation. Problem with Solution 1: on my computer, XP Home SP2 was installed already by Dell. When I tried to

ASP.NET Error: cannot load assembly

2004-10-20T14:41:00.000-04:00

I often had this problem with ASP.NET pages: Configuration Error: cannot load assembly 'assemblyname.dll' the error occurs in machine.config on line: The problem would appear out of the blue and last for a while, after which it would "fix itself." I finally found the cause and solution: 1. temporary solution (to get your application to work again): stop and restart the indexing service 2.

Table Variables vs. Temporary Tables

2004-10-06T13:32:00.000-04:00

305977 - INF: Frequently Asked Questions - SQL Server 2000 - Table Variables I've often had discussions with my colleagues about the benefits of using a table variable vs. a temporary table, and whether one is faster than the other. Here's the ultimate answer.

SMTP Authentication with SmtpMail in .NET

2004-09-23T19:12:00.000-04:00

Keywords: SMTP authentication SmtpMail MailMessage transport error 0x80040217 I recently had to send email from .NET code on a server that required SMTP authentication. It turns out the SmtpMail component does not expose any properties for specifying the user and password, but it does expose this ability through the Fields collection. There are various fields available in addition to those

Casting arrays returned by COM methods in .NET C#

2004-09-21T09:59:00.000-04:00

Keywords: VB6 multi-dimensional array casting .NET C# Interop Summary of the problem: some method defined in a COM component returns 2-dimensional arrays, but is declared as Variant: Variant getArray() In .NET / C#, this translates to object object getArray() My problem was with casting this as a string array. I tried the following: string[,] myarray = (string[,])getArray()); Console.Write(

The Peon's Guide To Secure System Development

2004-09-01T13:58:00.000-04:00

The Peon's Guide To Secure System Development Interesting high-level essay about software security. Worth reading.

Save the Hubble

2004-01-29T14:43:00.000-05:00

Save the Hubble It is understandable, though not forgivable, that the government has other priorities than the Hubble. Unfortunatelly the priorities of governments don't always align with those of their citizens, and unfortunatelly that's what we are experiencing in the United States right now. The incredible public reaction, outside of scientific circles, should be sufficient to keep the

India Offshoring

2004-01-19T10:27:00.000-05:00

"To be sure, many corporations have run into myriad headaches, ranging from poor communications to inconsistent quality. Dell Inc. recently said it is moving computer support for corporate clients back to the U.S. Still, a raft of studies by Deloitte Research, Gartner, Booz Allen, and other consultants find that companies shifting work to India have cut costs by 40% to 60%." http://

The Wild Divine Project

2003-12-10T03:03:00.000-05:00

The Wild Divine Project Wow, biofeedback... Can't wait to get my hands on this game.

A Field Guide to the Invisible Universe

2003-12-10T03:01:00.000-05:00

Article on Discover.com This article lays out some of the newest ideas regarding the universe and what it's composed of. Particularly intriguing to cosmologists is that the visible or detectable universe (stars, galaxies) makes up only a tiny portion of the whole. The rest appears to be "dark matter" and "dark energy," a misterious force that acts agains gravity and causes the universe's

Disappearing Species

2003-09-27T17:06:00.000-04:00

I read an article today about manatees and how their numbers are thinning. We humans seem to spend a lot of time worrying about species going extinct. We probably feel responsible, since many of the species that do disappear are destroyed due to human activity such as farming or hunting. How many species have gone extinct over the last 10,000 years, which is more or less the time span human

The Big Brother

2003-09-27T16:55:00.000-04:00

The US needs a competitor. With the fall of the Soviet Union, there is currently no large power in the world to compete with the United States, at least not technologically. This, in turn, poses a serious threat to technological progress. Most advances in the past have been made under pressure from other countries, in a "who gets there first" race. Probably the best example is the race to the

Have Humans Stopped Evolving?

2003-09-03T23:08:00.000-04:00

The tempting answer is "yes." After all, natural selection seems to have come to a halt. Modern society provides for all its individuals, regardless of phsyiscal or mental abilities. There is no evolutionary pressure that would favor some traits over others and induce natural selection. However, the answer may not be that simple. The most socially successful individuals, such as career women and

Solar Energy

2003-08-22T11:43:00.000-04:00

It is easy to overlook the fact that most energy sources on Earth can be traced back to the Sun. Hydroelectric power would not be available without an atmospheric water cycle that creates potential energy by defeating gravity and putting water higher than where it evaporated from originally. Fossil fuel sources like oil, coal, or gas can all be traced back to some life form that used solar energy

LavaRnd CorpSpeak

2003-08-05T20:55:00.000-04:00

LavaRnd CorpSpeak This simple script generates random "corporate memos" by shuffling meaningless phrases. It reminds me of an article published in a Romanian newspaper several years ago. The author was listing three columns of short phrases collected from various actual political speeches. You could randomly pick a phrase from the first column, one from the second, and one from the third, and