Safely deploying changes to production servers
When you deploy incremental changes on a production server, which is running and live all the time, you sometimes see error messages like “Compiler Error Message: The Type ‘XXX’ exists in both…”. Some
Where to put the logic? SQL? Code?
SQL is a powerful language and is very good at what it was made for – querying sets of data. C#, Java, and other languages are also powerful – more powerful than SQL in many ways. For looping and doin
Forum Fun: Running Calculation SQL
A discussion about a forum post for handling a running subtraction in a SQL query.
For my first Forum Fun post, I'm going to discuss a running calculation SQL question posted by a user, asyssolvers,
Efficiency of Subqueries and OR conditions in SQL
A discussion of how joins significantly outperform subqueries and how this is more evident when OR conditions are involved.
SQL queries can be written in a number of ways and be functionally equivale
Analysing dependencies in MSSQL
I’m working on a project where almost all the logic is in database objects and there are a few developers working on it. Now, in this context, it is extremely difficult to keep track of the dependenci
Log Shipping MS SQL Server 2008 - Part I
Through this video I have tried to explain the concept of log shipping in MS SQL Server. It's broken into 2 parts, this is the first part. Watch Part 2 here
SQL Joins and Subqueries
This is a discussion about SQL joins and subqueries with information about how to format join statements properly.
In any non-trivial task, developers need to join tables together. Joins are importan
Log Shipping MS SQL Server 2008 - Part II
Through this video I have tried to explain the concept of log shipping in MS SQL Server. It's broken into 2 parts, this is the second part. Watch Part 1 here
Required BoundField in Gridview
Download RequiredBoundFieldDemo.zip - 409.54 KB
Introdcution
I like to use the ASP.NET GridView for administrative functions in my applications. Like editing and managing statuses, types, etc.. Usu
Using Views for Faster SQL Query Development
A discussion of how views give a more denormalized means for querying against normalized tables.
Ad-hoc reports are frequently requested at the Boston Public Schools. Generally each request is differ
Dynamic Pivoting with Cubes and eventhandlers in SQL Server 2005, 2008 and 2008 R2
Download source - 3.48 KB
Introduction
In this article, the creation of dynamic pivots are explained. It starts with a simple pivot. The second step is to add lines for calculating totals. In thi
Preventing duplicates in the data
Duplicates - the bane of any good database. Some duplicates are technical
- for whatever reason the primary key wasn't on the table and an extra record was somehow inserted. Good table architecture
Guide to Creating Dynamic LINQ Queries
Are you new to LINQ and trying to figure out how to create dynamic LINQ queries like the same way you do with ADO.NET? Well, it’s not that hard at all, and all you need to do is use a combination of t
Script to extract all check constraints from a database
This is from a utility I'm working on. It is compatible with SQL-92 INFORMATION_SCHEMA views. Enjoy!
DECLARE @constraints CURSOR;
DECLARE
@table_full_name nvarchar(max)
, @constrai
Accessing MVC Routing URLs in JavaScript
As we all know, the MVC framework for ASP.NET uses the .NET routing engine, introduced in .NET 3.5, for generating and resolving URLs at runtime. As such, we can use the UrlHelper class to query the r
Unit Testing 101: Getting Started with NUnit
Introduction
Unit testing is the process of using short, programmatic tests to test the logic and functionality of discreet units of code. The use of such tests brings a whole host of benefits, not t
Delegates 101 - Part I: What is a Delegate?
Introduction
OK, so what has prompted me to start writing a basic tutorial series; and why on delegates? Well, the answer is quite simple: I have found few (if any) articles on the Web which actually
Resizing an Image On-The-Fly using .NET
The other day, I was given the requirement to be able to dynamically resize a JPEG image server-side before rendering it down to the browser, thus reducing unnecessary bandwidth usage between the serv
Delegates 101 - Part II: Anonymous Methods and Lambdas
Introduction
In Part I of this series, we looked at what .NET delegates are, and how they can be used to hold methods in variables, or to pass methods as parameters into other methods.
In this artic
Oh No! Not Another Way to Write a CSV File?
It's one of those things I've implemented many times, usually when the phrase "... and we'd also like to be able to export it as a CSV." has been tacked onto the end of some requirement at t