Articles from January 2009
It seems that every client project I have started in recent months has involved a new form of complexity in SQL Server scripts. The most recent task that I had to tackle was with generating a comma separated list based on entries in a table. Now this was something that I needed for each and every row of a result set, so I didn't want to do the actual list creation in .NET. So, reaching back to some content and examples that I built for my "Creating Dynamic SQL Pivots" article which will be published in an upcoming edition of SQL Server I found the following helpful snippet of code.
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Posted by Mitchel on Friday, January 30, 2009
One of the biggest failure points I see with third-party DotNetNuke modules, including some of my first released modules were failures due to the lack of support for ObjectQualifier or DatabaseOwner values within the SqlDataProvider files. Although the process to add support for these two tokens is easy to add, it is very hard for those of us that like to test our database structures outside of DotNetNuke before we actually commit to building our modules. Thankfully, with a bit of research, I have found a way to build SQL Scripts for DotNetNuke using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) in a normal fashion and using a simple find/replace operation to bring everything into compliance with DotNetNuke integration. This post will explore the method that I use to accomplish this.
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Posted by Mitchel on Monday, January 26, 2009
While working through some issues recently with some legacy code writen by someone else I was faced with a horrible case of a shared object that was writing to the file. This was a "custom" logging implementation and opened a file for append, inserted the line, and then closed the file. Well in times of heavy load the system would encounter errors such as "Cannot access ___ because it is being used by another process". So in effect the file was either still open, or the lock was not yet released. This post goes through a bit of the detail on how I resolved the issue.
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Posted by Mitchel on Thursday, January 22, 2009
As I am getting things in place for 2009 I wanted to post a quick update here on the blog about a few new exciting things that I am working on and to notify everyone of a new service offering that IowaComputerGurus is starting today.
Book Announcement
The biggest news of all is that I have another book writing deal with Wrox Press. I have hinted about this over the past few weeks, but it is now official that I will be writing another book for Wrox. I can't say alot about what is in the book, but it will be a book on Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. As I have more abilities to make comments and provide information, you will find it here.
New Service (MyWebKeepAlive.com)
For quite a while now I have been talking about creating a keepalive solution for users as alternatives to Host-Tracker or Pingdom. This is finally becoming a reality, and in the next few weeks will have a home on the internet via MyWebKeepAlive.com. The good news is that I can set clients up with the service now as the backend processing portion is fully functional.
Pricing for this service is as follows.
- 1 URL - $19.99 a year
- 5 URL's - $49.99 a year
- 10 URL's - $79.99 a year
This service is a simple keepalive service that will ping your site every 9-13 minutes to prevent ASP.NET unloading. The service will expand to include additional report elements to provide a better overall value.
For those interested in a keepalive solution, please e-mail me at msellers@iowacomputergurus.com and I can discuss getting you setup before the public launch of the website.
Future Blog Articles
I still have a big backlog of blog topics, so be expecting new posts here about things such as ASP.NET Charting Controls, Redgate Tools Reviews, Active Forums Reviews and more! As always, please let me know if you have any suggestions.
Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Due to many reported issues with blog email notifications not being sent I have created an new Email Subscription service. Users will need to use the new Subscription Form, to re-subscribe to e-mail notifications. For the next 1-2 weeks this will be an instant notification, but will migrate to a weekly service.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, January 14, 2009
One very common scenario in when working with User Interface database queries is the concept of a "Dynamic Search Query". A select statement that can have optional items in the where clause. There are a number of methods to implement this, however, they have varying levels of difficulty and, overall each have their own tradeoffs, in implementation, readability, performance, and accuracy. This article explores a few of the most common methods of doing this.
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Posted by Mitchel on Friday, January 09, 2009
One of the most common questions that I get via the forums on this site, or via e-mail is "How do you get your sites to run so fast". Although not perfect, my sites typically run a bit faster than your average DotNetNuke sites. Previously I have kept the exact specifics of my changes to myself, however, with a litle encouragement from the community I have decided to share the full context of the changes that I make to a default DotNetNuke installation to get better baseline performance, as well as extra items that I do to help when I really need that "boost".
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Posted by Mitchel on Monday, January 05, 2009
To continue on with an idea that Will Strohl gave me with his end of the year blog entry. I thought I would take some time and do the same here. A bit of a "year in review" if you will of the things that I think have been notable accomplishments in 2008 as well as a few thank you's along the way.
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Posted by Mitchel on Thursday, January 01, 2009