Knowledge Base for IT Professionals, Teachers and Astronauts
There is a great way to insert multiple rows into a Microsoft SQL Server database in one statement. This notation has multiple advantages: simplicity and the grouping of multiple instructions into one transaction.
INSERT MyTable (name, description)
VALUES
('John', 'Manager')
,('Bill', 'Truck driver')
Script from Ernie Cruz
When you try to import Excel 2007 or later “.xlsx” files into an SQL Server 2008 database you may get the following error mesage :
The ‘Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0’ provider is not registered on the local machine. (System.Data)
To solve this problem install the appropriate version of the Microsoft Access Database Engine.
On the 32 bit version of Windows Server 2003 download and install the 32 bit version of Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable from
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13255
On the 64 bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 download and install the 64 bit version of
Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable from
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13255
and the
2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components from
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=23734
sp_configure ‘show advanced options’, 1;
RECONFIGURE;
sp_configure ‘Ad Hoc Distributed Queries’, 1;
RECONFIGURE;
GO
SQL Server Management Studio is a 32 bit application, most likely it can only use the 32 bit driver on the 64 bit operating system.
If you try to install the 32 bit version of the newer Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable and you already have the 64 bit version of Microsoft Office installed on your 64 bit computer you will get the following error message:
“You cannot install the 32-bit version of Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 because you currently have 64-bit Office products installed. If you want to install 32-bit Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010, you will first need to remove the 64-bit installation of Office products. After uninstalling the following product(s), rerun setup in order to install 32-bit version of Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010: …”
The old 32 bit 2007 Office System Driver can be installed even if the 64 bit version of Microsoft Office 2013 is installed on the machine.
The default installation of Visual Studio 2012 cannot open SQL documents when you double click on them in Source Control Explorer. To be able to do that you have to install the
SQL Server Data Tools for Visual Studio 2012
For more information visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/data/tools.aspx
My son and his friend wanted to record as they play together on a bass and an electric guitar.
To record two instruments simultaneously in Garage Band you need special hardware to connect both to the computer. You can buy a USB Recording Interface for a few hundred dollars, or you can make one for $13 plus tax.
All you need is a computer, two electric instruments or microphones, and a simple audio cable.
In this example we will connect a bass and an electric guitar to a Macintosh computer and record them simultaneously with Garage Band. Computers usually have only one microphone input connector, so you can only connect one instrument or microphone at a time. But these audio inputs have two channels (left and right), so the sound card can record two mono audio signals simultaneously. Basses, electric guitars and most microphones produce mono (one channel) signals, so we can connect one of them to the left input and the other to the right input of the computer. To connect two audio sources to the computer simultaneously you need a special audio cable with two mono 1/4″ phone female jacks on one end and a 1/8″ (3.5mm) stereo male plug on the other.
One 1/4″ phone female jack has to be connected to the left channel, the other to the right channel of the cable. If you cannot find a cable ready made in the stores you can make one yourself.
You need some tools, that you can also buy at RadioShack.
You need long-nose pliers, diagonal cutters, soldering iron and solder.
Buy
The 1/8″ stereo to dual RCA cable exposes the left and right channels of the audio input of the computer. The white plug is connected to the left channel, the red plug is connected to the right channel of the cable.
By default Garage Band can record only one track at a time, so we will enable multitrack recording in the Track menu of Garage Band below.
The new vocal project contains two tracks.
Turn on the track monitoring, so you can hear what you play.
Set up the second track as Vocals and Guitar.
There are times when you want to execute statements in the pre-build and post-build events of a Microsoft Visual Studio project when certain conditions met. In the next example we will copy the environment specific config file to the web application folder if the configuration is set to “Local”.
To edit the pre-buld and post-buld events
if $(ConfigurationName) == Local (
attrib "$(ProjectDir)Web.config" -r
copy "$(ProjectDir)Config_2012\$(ConfigurationName).xml" "$(ProjectDir)Web.config"
)
The commands will be interpreted line-by-line the same way as a DOS batch file, so it is important to place the opening parenthesis “(” in the same line as the if statement.
Corporations maintain multiple server environments for development, testing and production purposes.
All of these environments require specific settings to connect to the databases and other resources. When the build master builds the application for the specific environment the build process has to select the appropriate configuration and build it into the installer file for deployment.
It is a good practice to store these environment specific config files in a folder that also designates the Visual Studio version.
For console applications and Windows services place this folder into the “Source” folder.
In Microsoft Visual Studio you can add a folder to a project, but it will be created in the directory where the project file is located. To add a folder to a project when the folder is not in the project directory we have to manually edit the project file. In this example we will add a folder to our main project that contains the environment specific config files. The “Config_2012” folder is located in the “Source” folder outside of the “Project_2012” project directory.
The following steps will add the “Config_2012” folder to the project
<ItemGroup>
<None Include="..\Source\Config_2012\Dev.config">
<Link>Config_2012\Dev.config</Link>
</None>
<None Include="..\Source\Config_2012\Local.config">
<Link>Config_2012\Local.config</Link>
</None>
<None Include="..\Source\Config_2012\Prod.config">
<Link>Config_2012\Prod.config</Link>
</None>
<None Include="..\Source\Config_2012\QA.config">
<Link>Config_2012\QA.config</Link>
</None>
<None Include="..\Source\Config_2012\Staging.config">
<Link>Config_2012\Staging.config</Link>
</None>
<None Include="..\Source\Config_2012\UAT.config">
<Link>Config_2012\UAT.config</Link>
</None>
</ItemGroup>
The “Config_2012” folder will appear in the Solution Explorer and the config files will be added as linked files.
For web applications and web services place the Config folder into the web application folder
To add the config folder and files to the web application
The Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 2008 user interface only allows you to create a backup of a database to one of the local drives of the database server.
To create a backup of a Microsoft SQL Server database to a location outside of the database server execute the following SQL script:
BACKUP DATABASE MyDatabase TO
DISK = N'\\MyNas\MyDatabase.bak'
WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT, NAME = N'MyDatabase Database Backup', NOSKIP, STATS = 10
GO
Change the bold values to match your environment.
When you write a post or create a page you may want to add sample program snippets to it. If your code contains double quotes (“) the WordPress page will display different characters for the opening and closing quotes, like in this “example”.
Unfortunately these characters differ from the quotes you use for programming, so if someone pastes the sample code into a code editor the compiler will not understand them.
To force WordPress to display your lines as those were intended
When you insert HTML or XML code into you page make sure you keep the order described above. The visual editor will convert the < and > characters to < and >, so the WordPress engine will not interpret your sample code as part of the HTML of the page.
If you enter the following in Text mode
<code>
<html>Text</html>
</code>
WordPress will remove your < and > characters and the page will display
Text
If you receive a portable drive and want to see the list of folders, you can output it to a text file.
To save the list of folders in a text file execute the following command in the command window:
dir P: /AD /B >> "C:\folderlist.txt"
where P: is the drive letter of the portable drive
The file will be created in the root directory of the C: drive.
My friend just bought a new Lenovo ideapad z580 laptop with Windows 8 on it. She was not sure if her special statistical programs will run on Windows 8, so she asked me to remove Windows 8 and install her copy of Windows 7 64 bit on it. As it turned out the Lenovo laptop arrived with UEFI boot turned on and it did not accept the original Windows 7 64 bit DVD as a boot device. The solution is to turn off UEFI in the BIOS and enable the legacy boot.
To enter the BIOS
Turn off the UEFI boot mode in the BIOS
Save the BIOS settings
The computer will automatically restart into Windows 8
Boot from the Windows 7 DVD
Install Windows 7