Vadivel's blog

From a fellow MVP, I came to know about these links, "Indian state (Kerala) logs Microsoft out" and Kerala logs Microsoft out . I normally hate the talk of who is bigger "MS or others". As I always have a feeling that, depending upon the project, situation, budget etc., let the lead and management decide on the best software / platform to use. For developers, on layman's terms ... "Learn the technology which is going to feed you :) If C# seems to feed you better learn it. If tomorrow, Perl seems to come up hot again then it’s better to learn it else you would be left behind." Regarding this Kerala government’s move: If an organization decides that by moving to Linux we would save huge money and in many ways it would help our client as well then I have nothing to complain against. If a government says that all schools would be moving to Linux platform I am really worried for the next generation students. At least 80% to 90% of the software development ...

Today morning I happened to read this MSDN article . The last part of the article talks about "Selecting a view source editor" of your choice. In my laptop I don't HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE >> Software >> Microsoft >> Internet Explorer >> View Source Editor. Am I missing something? My OS is Windows XP Media Center with SP2 and I have IE 6.o in my box. Technorati tags: MSDN , Microsoft , IE

Today Morning I became pretty excited on seeing a mail from Pandu in x3a (ex-3rdagenda team) group. The reason being Pandurang V Nayak is going to join Microsoft India in the Developer and Platform Evangelism team as a Windows Live Developer Evangelist shortly. He is a hard-core fan of Microsoft and am sure he would be pretty excited himself when he got the offer from his dream company :) Hope to see him as a speaker in Microsoft Tech-ED 2007. I used to speak a lot about this guy to my colleagues and normally the talk would end something like, "he deserves to be working for MS and I donno why he is not applying for it" :) I have told that "Pandu is my mentor / role model in many ways" to many of my close friends (like, Siddharth, Senthil, Logu, Maruthiraja, Rameesh, Badri, Raja, Santhi etc.,). This guy is down to earth and technically really sound. Above all his attitude to help others is what I have really admired in him. CONGRATS PANDU. May the "Good God...

Check out Scott Guthrie's Blog on ASP.NET and .NET for more info on this subject. Technorati tags: ASP.NET 2.0 , ASP.NET

I created a new blog ( http://sailakshmi-vadivel.blogspot.com ) in order to test out the upgraded version of blogger.com List of features which I have noticed so far: 1. One feature which was there in my wish list for quite a long time is "Creating categories or Labels" for blog posts. That has been implemented in this new version. 2. They have implemented "Web parts" partially. i.e., the owner / admin of the blog can customize the look and feel of the site with ease. They can add new "Page elements" and/or rearrange existing items within the page layout with the help of a mouse itself. 3. No need to create a new username / password and remember it all the time. We can use our GMail account itself for managing our blogspace also. I came to know from http://buzz.blogger.com/2006/08/blogger-in-beta.html that, going forward all our existing blogs can also be migrated to this new engine. I would love to label all my posts ASAP. Since its in beta they would...

Microsoft seriously considered the idea of bundling Visual Studio Express with Windows Vista, according to a Microsoft official quoted on ArsTechnica. Microsoft is still considering including "a link in Vista's Programs menu which would reach out to the MSDN site and download an Express edition of Visual Studio, presumably whichever one the user prefers," ArsTechnica reports. Some developers may be disappointed by Microsoft's decision to scuttle the plan. But antitrust watchers and those who believe Vista is already too big and bloated aren't likely to shed any tears. Source: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,2002354,00.asp?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535 Technorati tags: Microsoft , Vista , Visual studio express

Extending its support for scripting and dynamic languages, Microsoft is hosting a project on its CodePlex site to deliver a PHP language compiler for the .Net Framework. Known as Phalanger, the project reached Version 2.0 Beta 2 on July 30. The primary goal of the project, released under Microsoft Shared Source Permissive License, is to enable full functionality of existing PHP scripts on .Net without any modification, Microsoft said. Unlike the original PHP interpreter, Phalanger compiles scripts into MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language). Phalanger offers Web application developers the ability to leverage both the ease-of-use and effectiveness of the PHP language and the power and richness of the .Net platform, the company said. And the compiler developers can deploy and run existing PHP code on an ASP.Net Web server and develop cross-platform extensions to that code. Source: eWeek.com Technorati tags: Microsoft

Normally for finding whether an integer is divisible by another integer we would use Modulo function (%). But what if we have two decimal values? The below code snippet would help you in that case. Declare @decValueOne decimal (10,2), @decValueTwo decimal (10,2) Declare @tempResultCeiling int , @tempResultFloor int Set @decValueOne = 21.3 Set @decValueTwo = 7.1 --Normal method which would work for two integer values Select cast(@decValueOne as int ) % cast(@decValueTwo as int ) Select @tempResultCeiling = Ceiling(@decValueOne / @decValueTwo) Select @tempResultFloor = Floor(@decValueOne / @decValueTwo) Select Case When @tempResultCeiling = @tempResultFloor then 'Evenly Divisible' Else 'It''s NOT divisible' End as 'Result' If you run the above code snippet the result would be 'Evenly Divisible' as 21.3 is three times 7.1 Technorati tags: SQL , Databases , SQL Server

Brad Templeton has written an good article on 10 Big Myths about copyright explained . It's really interesting and is a "must read" type of article. Technorati tags: Copyright

There seems to be few interesting tools for take in Microsoft site. Check this for more info http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/ xppowertoys.mspx Technorati tags: Microsoft

For the first time, Microsoft has made their MSDN Library freely available for download from Microsoft Downloads. Previously, it was only available for download to MSDN subscribers. Starting May 2006 all future releases would be made free for public. Download details: MSDN Library May 2006 Edition Update: The above link seems to be obsolete. The latest URL for this is http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=94596af5-cc58-45af-a14b-df627a31e783&DisplayLang=en Technorati tags: Microsoft , MSDN

One of the very common activities a SQL developer face is to flush records from ALL the tables in their development database. Though “Delete” and “Truncate” commands can be used to flush records in a table the issue is we can’t use them directly if we have constraints attached to some of the tables. One of the solutions is to “Delete” records in the tables in an orderly fashion. Like, “Delete” the child table first and then the parent table. As long as there are limited number of tables in the Database this solution is more than enough. But for those databases where there are lots of tables with constraints this solution would be pretty tough to implement. In those cases, try out my solution which I have explained later in this article. Code snippet to reproduce the foreign key conflict error: Create Table TruncateTblDemo ( [Sno] int identity , [FirstName] varchar ( 50 ), [SalaryBandID] int ) Go Create T able TruncateTblDemo_SalaryBand ( [BandID] int identity primary key , [Ban...

Webcasts by Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) -- July 24, 2006 - July 28, 2006 Attend these LIVE Webcasts by experts from Microsoft and get on to the edge of the steep-learning curve. Participate in the Webcast Contest during the Webcast and 2 lucky winners will win a cool Orchid Music Player. Watch Microsoft Experts all this July & August – LIVE. Register Now! July 24, 2006 Data integration in Excel (includes Office 2007) and how to incorporate it into your applications Speaker: Nitin Paranjape (Chairman & MD, Maestros Mediline Sys Ltd ) July 25, 2006 All about WCF “Indigo” Contracts Speaker: Manoj Ganapathi (Cognizant Technology Solutions) July 26, 2006 Get the Power of Microsoft Atlas to your Web Application. Speaker: Saurabh Verma (Co-founder & Chief Software Architect of "The Perfect Future") July 27, 2006 Sharepoint Portal 2007 - Managing your portal with Site Content Types and Workflows Speaker: Saurabh Verma (Co-founder & Chief Software Arch...

Check out my previous experience on installing SQL Server Enterprise and Developer Edition in a Windows XP Media Center box. The error which i was getting all this while is "Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition Server Component is not supported on this operating system. Only client components will be available for installation." and "Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition Server Component is not supported on this operating system. Only client components will be available for installation." Later I have downloaded SQL Server 2005 Express edition and after some initial struggle I have installed it. Today I was again thinking why am I not able to install the DEV version as it is supposed to be installed on Windows XP professional itself. So I reinitiated the installation process and the results were surprising to me. First I wanted to install MSDE and then try SQL 2000 DEV version. Installing MSDE: Step 1: I downloaded MSDE 2000 from Microsoft and ran ...

In SQL Server 2000, normal way of finding the total number of records in a table is by using Count() function. Though it would give the exact result, it has a performance issue. Its because it would do a table scan on that table. i.e, Select count(*) from Authors --- This would do a table scan on Authors table. The work around is to fetch the number of records from SysIndexes table. But please be adviced that though it would be faster, the number of records returned would not always be perfect. Only if the database has uptodate statistics it would show the exact count. i.e., Select Rows from SysIndexes Where [ID] = Object_ID('Authors') And indid < 2 Moreover it is not advisable to query the Sytem tables directly. It's because if Microsoft changes the schema of this SysIndexes table in future all your existing code won't work. In SQL Server 2005 they have come up Partitioned Table concept. So its pretty easy to find the row count of a table without using Count funct...

At last my blog is accessible now within India too. Thanks to Indian Government and ISP's!!!

http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jul/19blogs.htm -- According to rediff.com blog blockage would be lifted in next 48 hours! That article was written on 19th of July. Now its 21st July here and still vadivel.blogspot.com is inaccessible directly! I am wondering "Why would one need 48 hours to lift this ban!!!!?" . To my knowledge this move by the Government of India has only backfired. Most of the people wouldn't have perturbed to read those 17 odd actual sites which Govt was intending to block. But now since it is blocked many people would be very snooping to know what is written their :) So in turn Government is driving traffic to those banned sites without their knowledge. Now people across the world know what is India's answer to terrorism --- "Ban Blogs". Great!! Guess what could be the next step towards anti-terrorism policy of Indian Government --- "BAN THE INTERNET" !!!! Let the God save Indian democracy.

Since yesterday I am not able to access my blog. Initially i thought it could be because of some problem with their server! I was able to login to blogger.com and create or edit posts but not able to visit my own blogspace :) As this error wasn't resolved for more than few hours I thought there is something fishy. So I started to look for more information on this with the help of "Google". In that process, I understood that the Indian ISPs have blocked .blogspot.com, .typepad and .geocities domain's completely. It's really strange to know that Govt has issued orders to block it. Government seems to claim that "Terrorists are using this channel to communicate freely amongst themself". No second thoughts on saying "Terrorists links needs to be broken". But the solution they have implemented is totally ruthless. This is something like burning the whole house just because we have too much of mosquitoes in the house!!!! If a site / blog contains ill...

Off late, quite a few people are asking me about interview tips!! Though I don’t have any best prescription to follow before attending an interview, I thought would give it a try. What I used to do when I was attending interviews? I used to maintain a diary where-in I would take notes of imperative points while studying. Also after attending an interview I used to scribble down all those questions which were asked irrespective of whether I already know the answer or not. Later I would sit down and find answers for those questions which I wasn’t aware of. So this diary would contain all important points of a subject and FAQ of that subject (with answers). Once I get an interview call, the first thing I would do is to run through that diary completely. It really worked for me, because I noticed that questions gets repeated after few interviews The next thing I used to do is to collect FAQs from the internet and go through it WITHOUT fail. To my knowledge, for initial level of screening, ...

Check this Interview with Steve Ballmer . In this he touches on topics like "Will Ray fill the shoes of Bill Gates?", "Is Google a threat to Microsoft?", "Why Vista is getting delayed?" etc., I enjoyed reading it. Technorati tags: Microsoft , Steve Ballmer