Vadivel's blog

Error: Access is Denied: Microsoft.Web.UI.Webcontrols "=== Pre-bind state information === LOG: DisplayName = Microsoft.Web.UI.Webcontrols, Version= 1.0.2.226, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35 (Fully-specified) LOG: Appbase = file:///D:/WebPortal LOG: Initial PrivatePath = bin Calling assembly : NST, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null. === LOG: Attempting download of new URL file:///c:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v1.1.4322/Temporary ASP.NET Files/abc/15b74bf1/7d24a7c4/Microsoft.Web.UI.WebControls.DLL. Solution 1: I read from a Microsoft KB article that this could happen because of some issue with Index server! So if at all Index server is running unnecessarily either try stopping it or disable it. Solution 2: In the web.config file if the tag identity impersonate="true" is added, remove it and see. [Don't ask me why :)] The second solution was found my friend Sriram and the problem got resolved. Hope this would help someone ...

The Zypad wrist-worn computer was officially unveiled today by Eurotech, a company dedicated to the research, development, production and marketing of miniature computers (NanoPCs) and high processing capacity (HPC) computers. Promising to revolutionise the way in which millions of people work, the Zypad’s high-tech design is the culmination of circuit miniaturisation, a wide range of computer hardware functions, optimised power consumption and ergonomic considerations. Weighing only 290 grams, the device could conceivably serve as an everyday tool as common as the mobile phone or the palmtop. Source: www.eurotech.it Technorati Tags: Zypad , palmtop

Step 1: Goto WikiMapia.org (it's really a cool site) Step 2: On the top right you could see "WikiMapia". Move your mouse on top of it. Step 3: Choose "Search Places" Step 4: Type "Vadivel". You could find my house in the city map. Step 5: Just click on the box whose tootip reads "Vadivel's house". You would now see "Show info" link within that box. Click on it to see the description too :) This wikimapia is powered by Google Maps ! Technorati Tags : Google Earth , Google , WikiMapia

Does Microsoft hate developers :) Check out BLINQ and you would get that feeling yourself [pun intended]. Blinq is a tool for generating ASP.NET websites for displaying, creating, and manipulating data based on database schema. All one needs to do is to point Blinq to a SQL database and it will create a website for you! The website would contains pages that display sorted and paged data, allow you to update or delete records, create new records, and follow relationships between tables in your database. You don't need to write SQL queries to use Blinq ; LINQ will generate optimized queries for you that request just the data you want to show. Reqirement: Blinq 1.0 requires VS 2005 Standard Edition or higher, or Visual Web Developer 2005 Express, SQL Server 2000 SP4, 2005 SP1, or Express SP1. You must install the LINQ May 2006 Community Technical Preview before running the BlinqSetup.msi . The installer creates a \Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\Blinq folder, which contains DLLs for t...

Take a virtual tour of Scoble's house which has come for sale now. I love this concept of selling of a house. Pretty neat and after taking this tour i got a feeling that I know every part of his house :) Technorati Tags: Scoble , Real Estate

Microsoft today announced a “try it before you buy it” program allowing people to take an online test-drive of the 2007 Microsoft Office system release. Check this link if you wanna try it out. Technorati Tags: Microsoft , Office 2007 , Software

Offlate people have started thinking about investing their money in lands. I too think that to be a wise decision only! As most of us know buying a land in chennai (for that matter any where in the world) isn't an easy affair. I was just wondering what all one needs to look at before deciding to purchase a land. I thought I would put down what ever I know about this subject here. [Guys pls free to correct me if I my understanding is wrong somewhere. That way, it would help me understand as well as others who might read this in future]. Here we go ... 1. One should not buy farm lands if they want to build a residential house sometime later there. Because to my knowledge its illegal to build residential houses on lands meant for irrigation. 2. Encumberance Certificate -- This is what is shortly refered as "EC". One needs to get an EC from local sub registrar office (i guess we need pay a small amount for this). From this we / our lawyers :) can find out whether the guy who ...

TSFactory will be launching a new application that allows you to record every single individual session on your terminal servers or simply servers with remote desktop enabled (so you can record all that is done to Exchange, AD, SQL etc.) for later playback or archiving (for audit purposes for example). The size of the file really depends on what the user is doing. They expect the average session to use 2MB per hour. For version 1.0 this is what they have: • Session recording with all metadata saved so you can search by username, originating workstation, server, date/time. • Session recording based on username or time of the day (so you can schedule a recording to happen during certain times or only for certain users). • Small footprint service with minimal overhead. • Small player provided. For V2, to follow they will have: • Session recording for certain applications only (so you can record let's say your financial apps only). • Nice fancy web interface for session retrieval and p...

I am working on SQL Server 2005 for quite sometime - PUBS and NORTHWIND database doesn't come along with it by default. But most of my samples which i already have are based on either one of these database. So instead of recreating the sample just for testing purpose I went in search of an answer for "How to create Pubs and Northwind DBs in SQL 2005?" . Here is my findings. We can do it without much trouble. Just go here and download the .msi file and install it. Instruction for installing: The SQL Server 2000 sample database scripts are available as an installation file, SQL2000SampleDb.msi. After downloading, extract the sample database scripts by double-clicking on the .msi file. That would extract the database scripts and a readme file into the default folder - "C:\SQL Server 2000 Sample Databases" Hope this helps! Technorati tags: Microsoft , SQL , SQL Server 2005 , SQL Server Express

Out of the new stuffs which Microsoft is working on, my favorites are PowerShell and LINQ . Both are really interesting in its own ways. PowerShell -- This was previously called as "Monad". Its a new command-line shell and task-based scripting technology that provides comprehensive control and automation of system administration tasks. I guess this is the answer from Microsoft for Unix / Linux. That is, PS is as powerful (if not more) as Bash controls in Unix. As of now, Windows command line tool is cmd.exe (command prompt based on DOS) but from what I have understood going forward in the next version of Windows it would be replaced with PowerShell. The bottomline is, Powershell would become the command line tool for the next generation of Windows. You need to have .NET Framework 2.0 in your box if you want to get your hands dirty with this. Interested in knowing more about this? Check out www.microsoft.com/powershell Find below a sample script which I tried out with PowerS...

One of my colleagues day before yesterday sent me a message saying try typing “Bush hid the facts” in notepad, save it, close it and reopen it. I tried the same and initially I was surprised to know that it was displaying only few boxes!! Step 1: Start >> Run >> notepad Step 2: Just type the text in quotes alone – “Bush hid the facts” Step 3: Save the file [I saved it as a.txt] and close it Step 4: Open that saved file. I didn’t think this to be a Easter egg as I was sure that Microsoft wouldn’t unnecessarily take on US government like this. So I thought of testing it out. As a first attempt I replaced all characters within that file with “a”. That is, my file would read “aaaa aaa aaa aaaaa” now saved it as “b.txt”, closed it and reopened it. As I have expected it showed up only boxes. So I immediately concluded that notepad isn’t good at opening files which has only a single sentence of 4 words with its size as 4-3-3-5. I responded back to my friend with my findings!! But ...

You might want to check this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Ozzie Extract from that site: Ray Ozzie (born November 20 , 1955 ) is Chief Software Architect at Microsoft . He was formerly best known for his role in creating Lotus Notes . He grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois , graduating from Maine South High School in 1973. In high school, he learned to program on a GE-400 mainframe and did technical work on school theater productions. He received his bachelor's degree in computer science in 1979 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , where he worked on the PLATO system, and began his working career at Data General Corporation where he worked for Jonathan Sachs . After leaving Data General, Ozzie worked at Software Arts , the creators of VisiCalc , on that product and TK Solver . Shortly thereafter, he was recruited by Sachs and Mitch Kapor to work for Lotus Development to develop what became Lotus Symphony . Ozzie left Lotus Development in 1984 and founded I...

This is non-techie post. One of my friend sent me this link which I found to be useful. Thought would share it with you guys as well. Technorati tags: General

Though I have been using beta 2 of Microsoft Office 2007 for couple of weeks now. Only last night i noticed that it has a new extension now :) The new extension for MS Word 2007 is ".docx" . For those who weren't aware, previously Microsoft Word document used to have ".doc" as its extension. Little bit of googling helped me to find this Microsoft link where-in they have explained ".docx" as Office Open XML format . The whole interface of Word has changed and it looks really cool . As of now I have just looked into the way of making blog posts using it :) It's really simple. Step 1: We need to register our blog account with MS Word by choosing "Provider". In my case, it is Blogger. Step 2: Provide the "Username" and "Password" which we used to login into our provider. Step 3: Now we are ready to create the blog post. The document would have two parts. If you click on the header of the word document. It would read as ...

As you all aware, Google has released the beta version of “ Google Spreadsheet ” few days back. Only then through Rajendran [My ex-CTO and a good friend of mine] I came to know about Zoho Sheet. As I have said before, to know that a Chennai based company has developed something AHEAD of GOOGLE is not a small achievement. First of all, I really love the concept of sharing the spreadsheet with others. This might help people use this as a collaborative tool! But there are lots of doubts coming up in my mind when I think about "Spreadsheet over the web". So thought I would get it clarified from the people who have conceptualized, designed and developed it. Here is the interview with Hyther Nizam who is the Director of Product management for Zoho Services at AdventNet , and Product Manager of Zoho Sheet and Zoho Creator . Let’s get started … [Vadivel]: To start with, can you explain what the need of Zoho Sheet is? It would be great if you could give me few real-time examples on w...

Updated on June 20, 2006: I have removed the Bill Gates mail after reading the comment posted by an anonymous well wisher :) Though I was not too sure whether I have violated the copyright laws as I could see the contents being posted freely in few other sites as well. Still I don't have time now to do a research on whether its a violation or not. So for the benefit of those who haven't read that ... here are few links where you could find the same content which I have blogged here previously. 1. Seattlepi.nwsource.com 2. Bink.nu This can be another interesting read for you guys http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2006/06-15transition.asp Technorati tags: Microsoft

After a long silence I am blogging regularly for almost past 2 months now. Btw, I use “ eXtreme Tracking ” to track the traffic into my blog. When I check the summary of those results I am really happy to know that in the past 231 days I have got 6711 unique visitors . Out of which last month I have attracted 1362 unique visitors and this month (as of today 7 PM) there are 1733 unique visitors. I think this to be a good count. I want to reiterate that out of 231 days I have seriously blogged for couple of months only. Ok with that information, I want to talk about the problem in hand. Only recently I started thinking “dude, you are getting decent amount of readers on a daily basis. But then you aren’t getting much feedback from them. What’s the problem?” Just because I am not getting decent amount of feedbacks does it mean my blog isn’t informative? I really don’t know but I know that, normally people are reluctant to post their views as comments on site for various reasons. In my vie...

I attended the Architect track for few sessions in yesterday’s Day 2 of Microsoft TechEd. Man it was really boring. Mainly there was a session on SAS and till the end I didn’t understand the agenda of that session. Those guys were really confusing and weren’t able to handle questions properly. The session by Gaurav Khanna on CLR Hosting 2.0 was informative. As always Gaurav speaks very fast and at time we weren’t able to follow him closely. This comment I heard from many others who attended that session too. The highlight of the day was Nauzad’s session on BizTalk Server 2006. He almost took the session like “BizTalk for dummies” and it was really useful. In this TechEd I really missed Praveen Srivatsa on the DATA (SQL) track. Praveen is one such guy who gives lots of tips on SQL Server and mostly we wouldn’t have heard about them previously [This is my first post made via beta 2 version of Microsoft Word Office 2007] Technorati tags: Microsoft

The Interview Worksheets provide a structured approach for asking questions and assessing candidate competencies during an interview. Check this link which contains more than 20 worksheets catering to various aspects of interview process. Technorati tags: Microsoft

update REDMOND, Wash.--Bill Gates, the man who started Microsoft and has been its public face throughout its three decades of existence, plans to step away from daily work at the company. Gates announced on Thursday that he will gradually relinquish his current role, ceding the title of chief software architect immediately, while remaining a full-time employee for the next two years. In July 2008, he will remain as a part-time employee and chairman. The announcement comes as his company battles pressures on all fronts: a sagging stock price, competition from Google and nagging delays in the Vista operating system. Read the full story here OR from Microsoft site directly :) Btw this is the guy (Ray Ozzie) who is going to replace Bill Gates (partly): Related Post : http://vadivel.blogspot.com/2006/06/robert-scoble-is-leaving-microsoft-to.html Technorati tags: Microsoft

Microsoft TechEd 2006 have started here in Chennai, India. Today, I attended couple of sessions in Architect track and couple of sessions on Data (SQL) track. The Architect sessions which I attended were cool and the best session for me today is "CLR integration with SQL Server 2005". I guess the organizers didn't expect much crowd for this session. You know what? the room was jam packed and there were atleast 50 to 60 guys watching the session by standing in the corner of the room. I was one among them :) This session was conducted by Nauzad (MVP) and the way he drived the session was really interesting. The take away gift for the day (hope they would give me something tomorrow also :) ) was a beautiful looking Umbrella. Its really cool. Today's Disappointment I was disappointed when I couldn't find Abhishek (MVP Lead) today. Its quite sometime since I met him in-person, thought would catch up with him today :( Also this is the first time Anand (Manager of CNUG ...

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Follow your favorite teams and players during the FIFA World Cup tournament with Microsoft Soccer Scoreboard. This program allows you to access all the latest tournament news and information with just a click of a button! Brazil is my favorite team. I have attached the screenshot taken from my laptop (of this tool) displaying Brazil's first match result. Hope this time they would win the world cup :) More than that I am eagerly waiting for Ronaldo to break Gred Mullers record of 14 World Cup goals by an individual. If my memory is right, I guess he just needs 3 more goals not too far :) By the way, whats your favorite team? what do you think about Brazil's chance of winning 2006 world cup? You can download Microsoft Soccer Scorecard here .

N R Narayana Murthy, one of India Incorporated's much-celebrated icons, and chairman and chief mentor of Infosys Technologies, the country's second-biggest software services exporter, will step down from his position on August 30 this year. Citing company rules as the reason, Murthy said that at the age of 60, people relinquish their executive positions. He said that he would be thrilled and privileged if the Board in its meeting on July 10 and July 11, decided to ask him to continue as non-executive chairman, while the role of chief mentor goes to a smarter person. The Infosys Board will announce the name of the successor to Murthy on July 11, 2006. Nandan Nilekani, chief executive officer, Infosys, said that they would be happy to have Murthy continue as chairman, as they value his direction and guidance. Talking about his retirement, Murthy said that as he is on the advisory boards of many universities in the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific, a large part of his time is spent ou...

Atlast after struggling for couple of hours I was able to install SQL Server 2005 express edition onto my laptop. For those who weren't aware, I have bought a new DELL Inspiron E1505 with Windows XP Media Center as its OS. That said, I wasn't able to install SQL Server 2k (even developer edition) on to this OS. So I decided to go with SQL 2005 express edition and downloaded it from Microsoft site few weeks back. After that when I tried to install the software it started throwing all sorts of errors. Bit of googling helped me to find out the SQL Server Readme documentation . This surely helped me a lot and saved my day :) Related post : http://vadivel.blogspot.com/2006/05/sql-server-2000-not-compatible-with.html

Whenever Sai lakshmi (my wife) returns home after staying for few days in my in-laws place it would rain (atleast drizzle) here in Ramavaram. Now its 10:15 PM here in Chennai and its raining. Yes today morning only she came back to our house from my in-laws place :) I know its mere coincidence but I am really surprised this is happening for more than 2 years now :) Have any such coincidence happened in your life?

Court upholds ruling requiring Internet phone providers to offer wiretapping capabilities to law enforcement agencies. WASHINGTON -- A U.S. Federal Communications Commission ruling requiring VoIP providers to give law enforcement agencies wiretapping capabilities is legal, a court ruled today. "This ruling threatens both civil liberties and technology innovation," CDT Policy Director Jim Dempsey said in an e-mail. "This decision threatens the privacy rights of innocent Americans as well as the ability of technology companies to innovate freely." What do you think about this?

I came to know about this post from my friend http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/04/Deadlocks/default.aspx . I haven't read this article fully ... anyway thought would put it here for the benefit of others!

Have you ever wondered whether you could log information into Windows Event Log? If yes, read on :) As you know, there are several methods to log information about your applications. If at all you want to create a specialized logging mechanism, consider using xp_logevent . xp_logevent is a SQL Server extended stored procedure that is used to log customized events to the Windows NT system log. This information can then be examined through the NT Event Viewer. Usage: xp_logevent error_number , error_message , [severity] here, error_number -- can be any number greater than 50,000 and less than or equal to 1073741823 error_message -- can be any user defined message with 255 characters at the maximum. If the error message is > 255 characters it won't throw an error, instead only the first 255 characters would be displayed in the Event Viewer. Severity -- can hold, one of the following 3 values: ERROR, WARNING & INFORMATION. Please note that severity is an optional value an...

I am glad to know that my name got mentioned by Scoble in one of his yesterday's blogpost. http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/06/06/google-announces-more-sleepless-nights-ahead-for-msft-product-managers/ Dream come true :) Thanks Scoble .. you really donno how much this matters to me.

This is real interesting move from Google. It is taking on Microsoft on its home ground :) Sometime today, Google would be opening out its new Spreadsheet software for limited number of users. They call it as "limited test". What does "limited test" mean? Some Google Labs prototypes can handle only a limited number of users in their initial stages. When we know that's the case, we do our best to let you know too, by putting "limited test" next to its name, along with some screenshots and/or more information about the product for those of you who weren't able to get there in time to actually try it out. This FAQ might interest you: 1. What are the key features of Google Spreadsheets? 2. How do I sign up for Google Spreadsheets? 3. What browsers does Google Spreadsheets support? Do you want to have a sneek preview check this out :: TOUR If at all you are interested in testing out the beta software signup and wait for their mail (like what I am doing ...

This list is really interesting. Check the complete article here pcworld.com .

I was cleaning my room the other day. Only then i found my old diary which I have used in my earlier days to prepare for interviews. I found few links which I have made note of relating to SQL Server interview Q&A. I thought of logging it here for the benefit of others (who weren't aware about this). 1. http://vyaskn.tripod.com/iq.htm 2. http://www.techinterviews.com/?p=161 3. http://www.dotnetspider.com/kb/Article1659.aspx (this I found it recently only) 4. http://vadivel.blogspot.com/2005/11/list-of-my-sql-articles-tips.html :)

What is a (We)blog? Normally blogs are defined as "Online diary". But I see it as "the place to log our ideas for future reference". Are blogs useful? Let me try and explain it with an example! I have come across many ppls who used to copy the projects which they work in their company for future reference !! They do things like, 1. Uploading it to yahoo briefcase, 2. Zip it and send themself a mail, 3. Burn it into a CD etc., But practically they wouldn't be in need of the whole project as such. They might be interested in a piece of code which could be reused in some of their future projects. Please be adviced that its not right to copy the projects or IP (intellectual property) from your previous company. I feel it to be unethical. I know, perceptions vary :). When ever you learn something new (or) come across any new topic which you feel would be of use in future then I suggest you to blog about it. Down the line in a year or so if you look back there would ...

I read a nice article on Exception handling in .NET applications. Here is the link for those who are interested in reading it.

Here is a cool handbook on what needs to be checked on a web site. It has been prepared by Liz Clogher. If at all you are working on web applications then you need to check this out without fail.

There isn't a prebuild function for finding the product of a field in SQL Server. But there is a workaround which we could make use of by using the combination of SUM(), POWER() and LOG10() functions. If not for this query we would have to fetch all the records to the front-end and then do the calcuation there or use cursors to parse the records and write the logic for multiplying within that procedure. I have tested it very long time ago with both SQL Server 7.0 and 2000. Steps to be followed for finding the product of a column are given below: 1. Find the LOG value of all the data 2. Add all the LOG values 3. With the help of POWER function return the SUM to the POWER 10 4. Add one to the final result. That's it. You would have all the column values being multiplied and returned as an output. Let us try and implement it with an example. Creating and populating a sample table a. Create a test table Create table TblTransaction ( [CustomerName] varchar(20), [Price] int, [tax]...

Find below 3 different ways of adding "Leading" zeros to a given number. Table Structure Create table PaddingNumbers ( Fname varchar(100), Amount int ) Go Populate dummy records Insert into PaddingNumbers Values ('Vadivel',100) Insert into PaddingNumbers Values ('Vadi',300) Go Method 1: Select Right('00000' + Convert(varchar, amount), 5) from PaddingNumbers Method 2: Select Replace(Str(amount, 5), ' ', '0') from PaddingNumbers Method 3: Select Right(Replicate(0, 5) + Convert(varchar(5), amount), 5) from PaddingNumbers