Some SQL servers/services have been restarted for a long time. The error log will be large. It will take a while to open and view it. I use “DBCC ERRORLOG” or “sp_cycle_errorlog” to close the current error log and create a new one without restarting SQL services.

Sometime it is really convenient to let users to construct search query by themselves. So it is very import to have the function to build dynamic query. LINQ team provided the LINQ Dynamic Query Library. Scott Gu has an introduction blog about this library. And the authors of C# 3.0 in a nutshell also has a post about how to build dynamic LINQ.

Use word document mail merge function in C#.

a. Create a Mail Merge word template document, and a sample .csv file as data source.

b. Use the program to generate .csv file for actual data and bind to the word document dynamically.

c. Execute the Mail Merge, and Print/Preview.

Following are some sample codes:

// Generating csv file for Mail Merge DataSource
String strDataFilename = @”C:Temp“ + DateTime.Now.ToString(“yyyyMMddHHmmss”) + “.csv”;
DataSet ds = getDataSet();

int nRecCnt = ds.Tables[0].Rows.Count;

if (nRecCnt == 0)
{
MessageBox.Show(“No record found.”, this.Text, MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Information);
return;
}

using (FileStream fileStream = new FileStream(strDataFilename, FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.None))
{
using (StreamWriter streamWriter = new StreamWriter(fileStream))
{
//Record - csv Header
streamWriter.WriteLine(“First Name,Last Name,Address1,Address2,City,State,Zip”);

for (int i = 0; i < nRecCnt; i++)
{
DataRow row = ds.Tables[0].Rows[i];
streamWriter.WriteLine(string.Format(“”{0}”,”{1}”,”{2}”,”{3}”,”{4}”,”{5}”,”{6}””,
row[“FirstName”], row[“LastName”], row[“addr1”],
row[“addr2”], row[“city”], row[“state”], row[“zip”]));
}
}
}

// Execute the Mail Merge
Object strWordFilename = @”C:TempMyMailMerge.doc“;
Object oMissing = System.Reflection.Missing.Value;
Object oFalse = false;
Object oTrue = true;

// Create an instance of Word and make it visible.
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application wrdApp = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application();
wrdApp.Visible = true;

_ // Load Mail Merge document template
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Document wrdDoc;
wrdDoc = wrdApp.Documents.Open(ref strWordFilename, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing,
ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing);

// Open Data Source from .csv file
wrdDoc.MailMerge.OpenDataSource(strDataFilename, ref oMissing, ref oFalse, ref oFalse, ref oTrue, ref oFalse, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oFalse, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing, ref oMissing);

// Print and Preview the final merge
wrdDoc.MailMerge.Destination = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.WdMailMergeDestination.wdSendToNewDocument;
wrdDoc.MailMerge.Execute(ref oMissing);
wrdDoc.Application.ActiveDocument.PrintPreview();

// Close the template
wrdDoc.Close(ref oFalse, ref oMissing, ref oMissing);

As an IS manager, the most difficult part of my job is finding out the real requirement from users. Especially the user group mostly consists of the people who don’t really know any computer basic skills at all. I still remember that one time I asked one of our sales office assistant manager to restart her computer. After five seconds, she told me it was done. I was so surprised and asked how she did that. She told me she pressed the button on her LCD monitor to turn off and pressed it again to turn on…..

There were so many people in company who always came up with bunches ideas and requirements. But most of them just were either vague statements or general comments which were not something actionable. I had to always be patient and kept asking them to state what exactly they were looking for. Be specific is very important to have something done.

Exactly like last time when Windows 7 Beta went public, the site for downloading Windows 7 RC clashed again. I just see some blog entries explaining what caused this happened again.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/102445,windows-7-rc-download-crashes.aspx

and http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=910

But I’m sure competitors of Microsoft SQL will be very interested in this explanation:

“A spokesperson for Microsoft said that the problem was not bandwidth but that its SQL Server database had reached excessive fragmentation levels caused by the tremendous surge of queries.”

Another reasonable explanation I saw:

http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/PAUL/post/Why-did-the-Windows-7-RC-failure-happen.aspx

Everyday, I have to use Power Shell to do lots of admin stuffs. Most of the time I have to copy the output from command line windows. This morning I was thinking I should create a function to do that. But I found out Microsoft already provides it – Clip.exe! Although it is only available from Windows 2003/Vista, not for XPers, I copy it from a Windows 2003 machine. It works very well under XP, too. Great!

Just found a good article explaining how to use XML PATH() and STUFF() to generate comma seperated list from a table instead of using user defined functions. The solution is really cool. And the performance is really amazingly faster than UDF.

It is weird. Don’t know why it is not consistent. And it took me a while to figure out the BootStrapper folders because of the difference.

For Visual Studio 2005:

C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio 8SDKv2.0BootStrapperPackages

For Visual Studio 2008:

C:Program FilesMicrosoft SDKsWindowsv6.0ABootStrapperPackages

SQL Server doesn’t provide native support for Regular Expressions. But in SQL Server 2005 and above, its support for hosting Common Language Runtime (CLR) can remedy this. Here is a very good article talking about how to implement it in SQL Server 2005.

Regular Expressions Make Pattern Matching And Data Extraction Easier

BTW, I found a very cool FREE tool for developing Regular Expressions called Expresso.

PowerShell CTP3 is out. It is so excited. But after I installed it in my XP sp3, the Execution-Policy is set to “AllSigned” by default. Even my login has the Administrator rights on my computer, when I tried to run “Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted”, it came out like:

Set-ExecutionPolicy : Windows PowerShell updated your execution policy successfully, but the setting is overridden by a
policy defined at a more specific scope. Due to the override, your shell will retain its current effective execution
policy of “AllSigned”. For more information, please see “Get-Help Set-ExecutionPolicy.”
At line:1 char:20
+ Set-ExecutionPolicy <<<< Unrestricted
+ CategoryInfo : PermissionDenied: (:) [Set-ExecutionPolicy], SecurityException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : ExecutionPolicyOverride,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.SetExecutionPolicyCommand

The way to fix I found out is change in the registry:

<strong>[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftPowerShell1ShellIdsMicrosoft.PowerShell]
</strong>