Author Archives: david

I am a “TC Winner”

I won this badge for solving the Running Total Problem at Beyond Relational.
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MySQL NET Connector 6.3.6 bugs with Visual Studio 2010

Just wasted a day trying to fix things after installing mysql connector 6.3.6 which has managed code for vs 2010 and net 4. The problem is that this version reconfigures VS 2010. After which, VS stops working properly: 1. Add Connection wizard just closes as soon as you enter any server connection details – so [...]
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Logging: how to get Class and Method names

When logging errors is helps to have the Class and method names where the exception was thrown without using string constants that are a pain to maintain. The code to get the names is Current assembly and class name = Me.GetType.FullName Current class name = Me.GetType.Name Current method (function or sub) = System.Reflection.MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().Name
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The Benefits of Stored Procedures

The ‘debate’ over Stored Procedures comes up a lot, mostly in the PHP forums I frequent and I have become tired of repeating myself. So this post summarises the benefits and reasons for using Stored Procedures and I can just point people to it in future. Benefits of Stored Procedures Precompiled execution. The Database Server [...]
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How to run Xcopy with elevated privileges

A COM class to run xcopy as an admin.
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How to run code as another user

A COM class that enables code execution under a different user identity. It makes it really easy to run code with elevated priviledges in eg VBA as well as NET.
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Open a file in VB.NET

To open a file in it’s default application all you need is one line of code: System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("www.mysite.com") or System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("N:\myfile.pdf")
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John Cleese on Proportional Representation

Given the kind of crap we are bound to see and read in the next few weeks, here is an explanation of the real issue:
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Capitalise all Words in VBA

Easy to do with Pearl-type regular expressions but a knotty problem in VBA. I present an elegent solution that utalises VBScript regular expression 5.5 and can handle real names with apostrophies and hyphens.
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The Most Truth That I Know

If we could conquer greed then we would conquer need. This is the most truth that I know. I only wish it could be so.
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Some cool Flash widgets

Just came across some cool Flash widgets on abowman.com, check them out. Pengiuns: they follow your mouse around. Fish: click on the pond to feed the fish [edit]turns out it was the FollowSite plugin that was slowing up my blog – lousy plugin that does not work[/edit]
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Play a game and donate water

Try it out: Play a game online and do some good while you’re at it.
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Act on Global Warming

Get active about global warming and the failure of the Copenhagen conference, click the logo and send an email to our ‘leaders’. /* begin styles for RSS Feed */ .rss-box-action { margin: 0em; width: 160px; background-color: #E2EBD8; /* Change above line to changer background color of the panel */ border: 0px solid ##FFFFFF; } .rss-box-action [...]
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Calculate the Running Balance

How to calculate the running balance on a ledger using self-joins.
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Find user’s most recent post in each thread

One common problem that my sequence method can help to solve is how to display the most recent entry that a user has made in each thread that the user has contributed to: SELECT * FROM posts WHERE usedid = $userid AND postid IN (SELECT t1.postid, COUNT(t1.postid) AS sequence, t1.postid <= t2.postid AS flg FROM [...]
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How to Sequence each Sub-set of Records

How to find/display/keep/delete the first/last n posts/records/entries for each user by using a sequence.
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