Format Date in SQL Server

It’s very common to show the current date (i.e., month, day, and year) in different formats. Although you can obtain the current date with Microsoft SQL Server’s GETDATE function, getting the returned date in the format you need can take a lot of effort and code. The FormatDate UDF (user-defined function) provides dates in various formats by using the following options: Continue reading »

How to know it’s a Spoof Email?

I’ve had many clients asking if they are safe to open a particular email. Some emails would be really valid, but most emails would be fake. So next are some points to help identify fake emails:

• An authentic email really coming from a particular company will address you by your first and last names or your business name.
• It will not ask you for sensitive information like your password, bank account or credit card details.
• Most fake emails threaten that your account will be in jeopardy if you do not take action immediately.
• An email that urgently requests you to supply sensitive personal information is usually an attempt at fraud.
• Fake emails often contain misspellings and grammatical errors or are written in a language which you did not set as preferred for your PayPal account.

Remember not to click any links in suspicious looking emails. Stay safe

File Sharing between PCs without Password Protection

Sometimes you would need to share a file or a folder with another user and you would find it not so easy to do so, more and more if you or the other user doesn’t have a password for your account.

By default, in Windows 7, in order to share a folder, you would need that the Source PC being shared has a password and the Source PC owner would need to give you his password. There are two options to overcome this situation. Continue reading »

Week Review.. over 300,000 all time views

This week my blog managed to reach a target that I previously set in my mind, 300,000 all time views. Most popular websites manage to reach that amount in only one day. But I’m happy with the result.

Moving Forward

These last few months, I’ve been trying to add a post, if not daily, at least 4 times a week, and am almost managing it, to help more developers with the solutions to the daily problems I find, and other utilities that help users.

During the next weeks I will be shifting this blog to  personal domain name, www.ciappara.com, to make it more customizable. I’ve been meaning to do this for years, but now it’s time to do it

Blogging Solutions

I have been happy using wordpress for these last 4 and a half years, but now I would like to start using a .Net Blogging solution. This would help make customisations more easily, as I’m a C# guy , and can add anything I want. I’ve been searching for a few solutions, and I found BlogEngine.Net and Graffiti, or else develop continue developing a blogging engine using Project Nine. I will be testing and reviewing them and let you know what I’m choosing.

But more info on my new blog later. Till then continue watching this blog ciappara.wordpress.com! Thanks for all your reading!

Order BY Not Working in SQL Server Functions | Quickie

Ever created a function and needed to include the Order By clause. It would result in the following error being loaded:

The ORDER BY clause is invalid in views, inline functions, derived tables, subqueries, and common table expressions, unless TOP or FOR XML is also specified.

The problem is that to use, it requires a TOP clause or FOR XML. By if you specify TOP 100, you’ll only get the first 100 rows. You can specify a big number that you might think will never exceed. But what if you do? The best bet is to use TOP 100 PERCENT.

This will get you all the rows and works in Functions.

For Loop with Negative Step | Quickie

Cannot believe that I’m writing some helpful examples using VB.Net, but that is the language that we’re using at work, so have to adapt now. Next find how to make a loop with a negative step (decreasing step):

Imports System

Public Class MainClass
 Shared Sub Main()
 For intCount As Integer = 10 To 1 Step -1
 'Add the item to the list
 System.Console.WriteLine(intCount)
 Next
 End Sub
End Class

Add AutoNumber to GridView showing the RowNumber | Quickie

<asp:TemplateField>
  <ItemTemplate>
    <%# Container.DataItemIndex + 1 %>
  </ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateField>

Hope this helped

Solution | Unable to write output file ‘…pdb’; unspecified error

During this weekend, I started having a problem when building a solution in Visual Studio. It would load the following error:

Unable to write to output file Solution_Name.pdb

This Visual Studio solution has 8 projects, and a lot of files and folders. I tried several solutions that I found on the net, which worked for others, but none worked for my case including:

• Delete the .pdb file from the solution – Didn’t Work
• Delete the Debug folder – Still Didn’t work
• Delete the whole obj Folder – Nothing Continue reading »

Quickie – New Line in an Excel Cell

Just found this quick tip on how to enter a new line in an Excel cell. The trick is to use the key combination of Alt+Enter to create a new line. And when you do it, Excel will automatically enable text wrap for that cell.

For Windows use

Alt+Enter

For the Mac Users it is a little more tricky

Hold down Apple Key + Option + Enter 

Implement “Master Pages” in Java

Found a good blog post on how you can emulate the use of ASP.Net Master Pages in Java,to create the desired layout of the site. Have a look here