http://www.aivosto.com/vbtips/stringopt.html

Find additional tips on http://www.aivosto.com/vbtips/

BDUF!!!

Restoring a database disrupts the versioning. Code and data are not versioned together. Database structure and code are usually tied together.

Say i have a procedure i want to modify.

1. I edit the SP,
2. update it in the database
3. run it.

I find an error, correct it and want to run it against the original data. What do i do?

Restore is usually the best option if my test-data has a alot of relations. Maybe i even want to run the sproc against a copy of the production database when fixing a bug.

After each restore i need to update the sprocs to the new version. It can get quite tedious after a while and one risk is that you miss to update something if there are many procedures. One solution to this is to always have the code on disk and version controlled and script the updates into the database.

My opinion is rather clear in this case. Don’t have too much program-logic  in the database.

 1 function FilterLast([int] $nDays)
 2 {
 3     begin {
 4         $DateToCompare = (Get-date).AddDays(-1 * $nDays)
 5     }
 6 
 7     process
 8     {
 9         %{ if ($_.lastwritetime –gt $DateToCompare) { $_ } }
10     }
11 } 

So now i can write

ls | filterlast -nDays 4

From Perforce I found this writing about High level best practices in SCM.

Is SCM the acronym for:

• Software Configuration Management
• Source Code Management

Both searches on Google seems to to point in the direction that they roughly are equivalent with the “Software Configuration Management” being a little more high level.

I wanted to edit the imagefile i had as windows desktop background so i wanted to find out the location of it. Excellent material for a powershell lession i thought.

So where are the special folders? Could it be here:

ls ([Environment]::GetFolderPath('MyPictures')

Found help about how to get windows special folders  here and here.

What is [environment+Specialfolder]? Looks like it’s an enum.

IsPublic IsSerial Name                                     BaseType
-------- -------- ----                                     --------
False    True     SpecialFolder                            System.Enum

So you can list all enum names like this.

A nice way to list all options for special folders is:

[environment+specialfolder]::GetNames([environment+specialfolder])
Desktop
Programs
Personal
MyDocuments
Favorites
Startup
…etc

Eventually i had to use the windows dialog and found out that the wallpaper was in:

 ([Environment]::GetFolderPath('ApplicationData') + "\mozilla\firefox\")

But i learned some new powershell.

Yo can write

ls C:\ -rec | %{if ($_.PSIsContainer) { $_ }} | %{$_.Fullname}

Add a little filter function

1 function FilterContainer()
2 {
3     process
4     {
5         %{if ($_.PSIsContainer) { $_ }}
6     }
7 }

Which reduces the first line to

ls C:\ -rec | FilterContainer | %{$_.Fullname}

The installation order was VB6 and then VS2008.

Luckilly our app communicates via the server through a DLL and it will be a (relatively) simple task to replace that with a COM-class written in C#.

SqlInform automatic SQL code formatter (http://www.sqlinform.com/)

There is an online version but also a free although time-limited JAVA-program to download. The online version handles just 100 lines of code mind you.

Another online formatter without the 100-line limit.  http://www.dpriver.com/pp/sqlformat.htm

Some that i havent tried (yet…)

http://www.orafaq.com/utilities/sqlformatter.htm

http://www.dbainfopower.com/dbaip_free_download_execute.php (free registration )

http://www.wangz.net/cgi-bin/pp/gsqlparser/sqlpp/sqlformat.tpl (Pay)

http://www.ubitsoft.com/products/sqlenlight/sqlenlight.php (pay)