Free Export DataSet/DataTable/List<t> to Excel (without using or even having Excel installed)

Code Project - A free "Export to Excel" C# class, using OpenXML

It's amazing that even now, in 2013, there are so many developers still asking for help on how to write C# and VB.Net code, to export their data to Excel.

Even worse, a lot of them will stumble on articles suggesting that they should write their data to a comma-separated file, but to give the file an .xls extension.

So, today, I'm going to walkthrough how to use my C# "Export to Excel" class, which you can add to your C# WinForms / WPF / ASP.Net application, using one line of code.

Depending on whether your data is stored in a DataSet, DataTable or List<>, you simply need to call one of these three functions, and tell them what (Excel) filename you want to write to.

• public static bool CreateExcelDocument<T>(List<T> list, string ExcelFilename
• public static bool CreateExcelDocument(DataTable dt, string ExcelFilename
• public static bool CreateExcelDocument(DataSet ds, string ExcelFilename)

...

And that's all you have to do. The CreateExcelDocument function will create a "real" Excel file for you.

For example, if you had a created a DataSet containing three DataTables called

• Drivers
• Vehicles,
• Vehicle Owners,

..then here's what your Excel file would look like. The class would create one worksheet per DataTable, and each worksheet would contain the data from that DataTable.

...

Look, friends don't let friends use Office InterOp... (omg, especially for server/automated ops!). There are any number of options now available, many free or reasonably priced. Just... don't.... do... it...

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wxHexEditor, your new large, 16EBs (exabytes) large, file editor?

beta news - Open files of any size with wxHexEditor

The PC world has plenty of hex editors; does it really need another? Our first thought was probably not, but that was before we’d spent a little time with the fast, feature-packed and extremely capable wxHexEditor.

Some hex editors have annoying limits on file sizes, for instance. But not this one. WxHexEditor can handle files up to 2^64 in size, that’s 16 billion gigabytes, which will probably be enough for the foreseeable future.

...

There are plenty of other interesting options hidden away in the menus. We found tools to compare two files and highlight the differences; calculate a host of checksums (MDx, SHAx, RipeMDx, HAVALx, TIGERx and more) for any given view; back up, restore or erase the contents of any device.

...

wxHexEditor

...

WxHexEditor isn't limited to files. Click Devices > Open Disk Device and you can also open one of your drives and browse through its sectors. (Try running the program as an administrator if a particular drive isn't listed.)

Whatever you've opened, wxHexEditor allows you to view its contents. You can search for text or hex values, manually edit bytes or run search and replace operations (files are by default set to Read-Only, reducing the chance of accidental alterations).

And despite its lowly 0.22 version number, wxHexEditor has even more options hidden away in its menus. You can calculate 25+ checksums for any given file, for instance, or compare two files and highlight any differences.

Verdict:

As a beta it needs to be used carefully, but wxHexEditor is already a very powerful tool, fast and packed with essential features.

wxHexEditor

Events:

• Version 0.22 Beta Released (09/05/2013)
  • Now, supporting many codepages/encodings, including almost all DOS, ECBDIC, Windows CPs.
  • Also supporting multi character codepages like Shift JIS, UTF8/16/32 and others....
  • Added gksu and gksudo support for easy privilage elevations.
  • Added Russian translation, non-complete. (by Nikolai Novikov)
  • Fixed MacOSX binary issues that appears at old version due wx2.9
  • Many bug fixes also some usage changes.
• Version 0.21 Beta Released (01/01/2013)
  • Device and Partition Backup/Restore and Erase tools.
  • Customizeable hex panel formatting.
  • Customizeable colours!
  • Linux Process Memory Read/Write access.
  • MultiLocale support with Turkish Language
  • Options Panel
  • Fixed Hex control input

Features:

• It uses 64 bit file descriptors (supports files or devices up to 2^64 bytes , means some exabytes but tested only 1 PetaByte file (yet). ).
• It does NOT copy whole file to your RAM. That make it FAST and can open files (which sizes are Multi Giga < Tera < Peta < Exabytes)
• You can work with delete/insert bytes to file, more than once, without creating temp file!.
• Could open your devices on Linux, Windows or MacOSX.
• Memory Usage : Currently ~25 MegaBytes while opened multiple > ~8GB files.
• Could operate with file thru XOR encryption.
• Has multiple views to show multiple files in same time.
• Has x86 disassembly support (via integrated udis86 library) to hack things little faster.
• Has colourfull tags to make reverse engineering easier and more fun.
• You can copy/edit your Disks, HDD Sectors with it.( Usefull for rescue files/partitions by hand. )
• Sector Indication on Disk devices, also has Go to Sector dialog...
• Formated CopyAs! It's easy to copy part of a file in HEX format for C/C++ source, ASM source, also supports HTML,phpBB and Wiki page formats with TAGs!!
• Supports Hex or Text editor alone operation.Also can disable Offset region.
• Supports customizeable hex panel formatting and colors.
• Allows Linux Process Memory Editing operations
• Comparison of binary files, allows merge of near results.
• Supports ***many*** encodings including almost all DOS/Windows/MacOS CPs and multi-character sets like UTF8/16/32, Shift JIS, GBK, EUC_KR...
• Decimal, Hexadecimal, Octal and LBA ("Sector+Offset") addressing modes, (switchable one to another by right click of mouse on Offset panel.
• Save selection as a dump file feature for make life easier.
• "Find Some Bytes" feature for quickly find next meaningful bytes at file/Disk
• MD/RIPEMD/SHA/TIGER/HAVAL/CRC/ADLER/GOST/WHRILPOOL/SNEFRU checksum functions (via integrated mhash library.)
• Import & Export TAGs support from file.
• Written with C++/wxWidgets GUI libs and can be used with other OSes such as Mac OS, Windows as native application.

Every so often I need to open some pretty big files and always seem to have to search for an app each time. Caching this here so the next time I can give this one a try. Besides being able to open some pretty big files (16 EB... awesome) I dig some of it other features, like the hashing and device access.

On yeah, it's open source too...

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Think your passwords rock? Check out Telepathwords from Microsoft Research (which might have you thinking again about those passwords)

Microsoft Research - Avoiding Vulnerable Passwords—and Rules, Too

You could think of it as a brainteaser: Create a sequence of eight or more characters that includes at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, a digit, and a symbol, that doesn’t contain any words in English, and that is memorable enough that you can recall it.

For most of us, unfortunately, the challenge posed by these rules isn’t fun—it’s a painful chore forced upon us when choosing a password to access an email account, a company network, or a website.

Passwords that contain symbols and uppercase letters to meet these rules also tend to be difficult to type, especially on mobile devices.

Even worse, adhering to the rules doesn’t guarantee that your account or your password-protected data will remain secure. A surprising number of passwords that follow these rules are easily guessed by malicious hackers: “P@$$w0rd1,” for example, or “Qwerty123!”. If you specify one of these passwords, most login systems won’t raise any objections.

...

The free online research tool, launched Dec. 5, is called Telepathwords. Users can visit the project website and test the strength of their passwords—current ones, past ones, or ones they’re considering using.

“The system doesn’t ask the user to learn anything up-front or follow any specific rules,” Schechter says. “Rather, as you type each key of your intended password, it displays the characters it thinks you’re most likely to type next. If it succeeds in predicting one or more characters of the rest of your password, the evidence that these characters are predictable will be right in front of your eyes.”

...

Using Telepathwords feels similar to the autocomplete feature in search engines, except that it discourages you from following its predictions. Predictable characters don’t do much to increase the security of your password against those who might try to guess it, so if you type one of the three characters predicted by Telepathwords, a red X will appear above it. If you choose a character that is not among those predicted by Telepathwords, a green checkmark will appear above it.

While not truly telepathic, Telepathwords is endowed with great deal of knowledge about how users choose passwords. It knows all the usual substitutions, such as substituting the dollar sign ($) for an S. Telepathwords also looks for passwords constructed by moving a finger around the keyboard, regardless of direction. It has an extensive list of known-popular passwords, as well as a dictionary of English words and a list of common phrases obtained from Microsoft’s Bing search engine. And it’s wise to all sorts of tricks that users have devised—and attackers have long recognized—such as putting an asterisk between the letters of a familiar word.

Telepathwords also responds—with a diplomatically worded pop-up message—to passwords that rely on common substitutions or contain profanity, both of which attackers also are keenly aware.

...

Telepathwords

Kind of fun and kind of scary all at the same time...

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Rad Gate Post... Get your Red Gate Post here...

simple talk - Melanie Townsend - Get a copy of the Red Gate Post

We recently put together a newspaper of some of the best articles from Simple-Talk and SQL Server Central, complete with a dash of advice, playful ads, and letters to the editor. It only seems fair to allow the newspaper to be downloadable in PDF form so here it is in all it’s glory (the PDF is about 6mb).

If you take advantage of the lovely crossword puzzle and quiz questions, you can find the answer key over at www.red-gate.com/puzzles with a little bonus PDF to download.

Make sure you leave a comment and let me know whether there’s anything you particularly liked about the newspaper or would like to see added or changed in case we do future versions!

This is actually a great and funny read if you do anything SQL Server, Dev, DBA. If you can afford it (it's free) you should check it out...

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[Humor] A familiar looking Project Team?

agile scout - Every Software Project You’ve Ever Worked On

Let's I'm.... um... err... um.... yeah.  :P

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Slicing .NET - NSlice, the Python like Slice for .Net

Works on my machine - Slicing for .NET

...

First odd thing I read about Python was that a developer can use negative array indices. My reaction was: Why would I even want to get an IndexOutOfRangeException? That is just silly. But then I read what they actually do. They are just like the normal ones. The only difference is that they index the array backwards, for example: -1 means last, -2 means one before last, and so on. That is really handy. I cannot remember how many times I wrote count-1 or count-i.

After that I discovered that Python has an even cooler feature called array slicing. It is something like a quick for loop version. Let me show you an example:

array = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] print array[1:9:2]

The above code prints [1,3,5,7].

So formally speaking slicing has the following form (each argument can be negative, all arguments are optional):

[ start_index : exclusive_boundary : iteration_step ]

...

This is a really powerful though succinct syntax. Look at the following two examples:

array[::-1] #reverses the array array[1:-1] #skips first and last element

Then I stared to think about those features - how can I port them to C# ?

NSlice

I decided to give it a try and created a .NET library. At the moment there are 3 extension methods:

- Slice – performs slice on a passed collection.
- At - works like an ElementAt extension. The only difference is that the index argument passed to an At extension can be negative.
- AtOrDefault - works like an ElementAtOrDefault extension, but it also accepts negative indices.

But there is more into it. NSlice was written to allow slicing 3 types of .NET collections in the most efficient manner:

- Indexed collections (IList<> implementations) - slicing is performed eagerly and instantly. It does not matter whether the collection has 10 elements or 10 million elements. This is because the result is not created by copying elements, but by creating a transparent view over source collection.
- Enumerables (IEnumerable<> implementations) - slicing is performed lazily. Each possible slice scenario was implemented separately to achieve the best speed performance and least memory footprint. It fits nicely into the LINQ model and could be even used to slice a stream, if the latter was wrapped into IEnumerable<> implementation.
- Strings - slicing is performed eagerly and a new string is returned as a result.

nabuk / NSlice

About NSlice

NSlice is a free .NET library, designed to give you more flexibility in manipulating collections, originally inspired by Python slicing feature.

(Jump straight to the Cheat Sheet if you want to see code samples right away.)

Overview

NSlice was written to allow slicing 3 types of .NET collections in the most efficient manner:

• Indexed collections (IList<> implementations) - slicing is performed eagerly and instantly. It does not matter whether the collection has 10 elements or 10 million elements. This is because the result is not created by copying elements, but by creating a transparent view over source collection.
• Enumerables (IEnumerable<> implementations) - slicing is performed lazily. Each possible slice scenario was implemented separately to achieve the best speed performance and least memory footprint.
  It fits nicely into the LINQ model and could be even used to slice a stream, if the latter was wrapped into IEnumerable<> implementation.
• Strings - slicing is performed eagerly and a new string is returned as a result.

What is slicing ?

Slicing is just a for loop shortcut. Look at the following example:

...

But there is more. Slice allows each argument to be negative. It might seem weird to use negative indices but they are really useful. What are negative indices? They just index the collection backwards, for example: -1 means last, -2 means one before last and so on. See the following two examples to grasp the idea:

• Get last five elements: Slice(-5)

• Get collection without first and last element: Slice(1, -1)

...

nabuk / NSlice - Cheat Sheet

This page contains short code snippets that demonstrate NSlice features. If not specified explicitly, examples assume that collection variable has previously been initialized like this:

Like the author, the thought of a negative index seems really weird, but after reading about NSlice, it kind of makes sense. And it's much cooler than a reverse for loop. Then there's the other features too...Oh and that he's released the source. Cool, cool and double cool...

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WiX'ing in VS 2013. WiX 3.8 adds VS 2013 support, bootstrapper and more

InfoQ - Wix 3.8 Adds VS 2013 Support in Votive and WiX Native Library and Bootstrapper Application Functions

Wix, Windows installer package tool, has released version 3.8 with support for Visual Studio 2013 in Votive and WiX native libraries. It includes bootstrapper application functions which extends WixStandardBootstrapperApplication. The release provides an ability to detect Windows 8.1 in Burn in addition to detecting properties in WixVSExtension using Visual Studio 2013.

...

WiX - WiX Toolset v3.8

The v3.8 RTM build is v3.8.1128.0.

For more information see: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2013/11/28/wix-v3.8-released and http://www.joyofsetup.com/2013/11/28/wix-v3-8-released/.

Major features of WiX v3.8 are:

• Support for Visual Studio 2013 in Votive and the WiX native libraries. (Bob Arnson and Rob Mensching)
• Bootstrapper application functions to extend WixStandardBootstrapperApplication. (Neil Sleightholm)

Minor features include:

• Properly detect Windows 8.1 version in Burn. (Blair Murri)
• Visual Studio 2013 detection properties in WixVSExtension. (Bob Arnson)
• fun.AutoVersion preprocessor function to provide automatic version numbers. (Neil Sleightholm)
• New WixStandardBootstrapperApplication themes. (Neil Sleightholm)
• Options in CloseApplication to send end-session messages, to be prompted if programs are still running, and to terminate the process if gentler requests are ignored. (Rob Mensching)
• ThmUtil (and therefore WixStandardBootstrapperApplication) supports hidden controls and transparent images. (Neil Sleightholm and Rob Mensching)
• LocUtil (and therefore WixStandardBootstrapperApplication) supports probing for default language resources rather than requiring region-specific language resources. (Neil Sleightholm)

The following issues were fixed in WiX v3.8:

..."

Free, open source and powerful, WiX is a seriously powerful setup builder...

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The TFS Upgrade Guide gets... well... upgraded. v3, the TFS 2013 Upgrade Edition

Willy's Reflections - TFS Upgrade Guide comes out of silent BETA release and ships v3 for TFS 2013

We are please to announce the release of TFS Upgrade Guide, v3 for practical guidance for an upgrade to TFS 2013.

This guide is intended as a supplement to the Upgrade information found in the Team Foundation Server Installation and Administration guides. It is recommended to begin with the Team Foundation Server Installation and Administration Guide (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29035) before using this guide. This guide covers scenarios which may be encountered during and after the upgrade process and provides examples of most common and potential issues.

...

TFS Upgrade Guide - v3 - TFS 2013 Upgrade Guide

Welcome to the Team Foundation Server Upgrade Guide where we, the ALM Rangers, will take you on a guided journey through practical and scenario-based guidance for upgrading your existing Team Foundation Server (TFS) infrastructure to TFS 2013, walking through some of the common scenarios encountered during the upgrade process.

NOTE The guidance is based on Visual Studio TFS 2013 and should be used in conjunction with documentation that accompanies the product and is available on the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) at http://msdn.microsoft.com.

Intended audience
We expect the majority of our audience personas to be Dave – TFS Server Administrator, Jane – Infrastructure specialist, Garry – Development Lead and Paul – Database Administrator. See ALM Rangers Personas and Customer Types1 for more information on these and other personas.

The guide assumes a good knowledge of the TFS and an operational administration mindset – in other words, intermediate to advanced TFS Administrators.

What you’ll need
The following prerequisites are needed and referenced in this guide as ‘supported editions’:
 TFS 2010 and 2012 as existing environment
 TFS 2013 as target environment

...

No more excuses... time to upgrade or at least seriously consider it... come on, it shouldn't be that hard, right? At least, not if you have this guide in hand [Note to self: Walk the walk... sigh... must upgrade mine soon]

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Windows 2012 Server Edition Comparison Matrix and more...

Firewall.cx - Windows 2012 Server Foundation, Essential, Standard & Datacenter Edition Differences, Licensing & Supported Features.

Windows Server 2012 Editions

On the 1^st of August, 2012 Microsoft released Windows Server 2012– the sixth release of the Windows Server product family. On May 21^st 2013, Windows Server 2012 R2 was introduced and is now the latest version of Windows Server in the market.  Microsoft has released four different editions of Windows Server 2012 varying in cost, licensing and features. These four editions of Windows Server 2012 R2 are: Windows 2012 Foundation edition, Windows 2012 Essentials edition, Windows 2012 Standard edition and Windows 2012 Datacenter edition.

Let’s take a closer look at each Windows Server 2012 edition and what they have to offer.

Users can also download the free Windows Server 2012 R2 Licensing Datasheet in our Windows Server Datasheets & Useful Resources download section, which provides a detailed overview of the Licensing for Windows Server 2012 and contains extremely useful information on the various Windows Server 2012 edition, examples on how to calculate your licensing needs, Virtualization instances supported by every edition,  server roles, common questions & answers, plus much more.

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Windows Server 2012 Foundation edition...

Windows Server 2012 Essentials edition ...

Windows Server 2012 Standard edition ...

Windows Server 2012 Datacenter edition ...

...

Windows  Server 2012 Licensing - Understanding Client Access License (CAL) and Device Access License (DAL) Licensing models ...

Windows Server 2012 Essentials Edition Licensing Model ...

Windows Server 2012 Essentials Edition Licensing Model ...

Windows Server 2012 Standard Edition and Datacenter Edition Licensing Model ...

Conclusion

Microsoft’s Windows Server 2012 is an attractive server-based product designed to meet the demands of small to large enterprises and has a very flexible licensing model. It is very important to fully understand the licensing options and supported features on each of the 4 available editions, before proceeding with your purchase – a tactic that will help ensure costs are kept well within the allocated budget while the company’s needs are fully met.

A co-worker shared this with me and while it might be cribbed from other resources, I still liked it. There's nothing like a little comparison matrix to be a "thousand words" multiplier...

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RegEx'ing - The RefCardz

DZone - Refcardz - 196: Regular Expressions

The Essential Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet

A regular expression, also known as a regex or regexp, is a way of defining a search pattern. This Refcard assumes no prior knowledge of regular expressions covers basic features of regular expressions, including normal and special characters, quantifiers, capturing and non-capturing groups, and more.

About Regular Expressions

A regular expression, also known as a regex or regexp, is a way of defining a search pattern. Think of regexes as wildcards on steroids. Using wildcards, *.txt matches any-thing followed by the string ".txt". But regular expressions let you e.g.: match specific characters, refer back to previous matches in the expression, include conditionals within the expression, and much more.
This Refcard assumes basic familiarity with program structures, but no prior knowledge of regular expressions. It would be wise to play with as many of the examples as possible, since mastering regex requires a good deal of practical experience.

There is no single standard that defines what regular expressions must and must not do, so this Refcard does not cover every regex version or 'flavor'. Parts of this Refcard will apply to some flavors (for example, PHP and Perl), while the same syntax will throw parse errors with other flavors (for example, JavaScript, which has a surprisingly poor regex engine).

Regular expressions are supported in most programming and scripting languages, including Java, .NET, Perl, Python, PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, Ruby, and XML. Languages that do not natively support regular expressions nearly always have libraries available to add support. If you prefer one regex flavor to the flavor the language natively supports, libraries are often available which will add support for your preferred flavor (albeit often using a slightly different syntax to the native expressions).

...

If you've been following me for any length of time you'll have heard me whine about how much I stink at regex'ing. I just don't do it near enough to feel comfortable with it, let alone even approach "good." Heck, I'm so far from good I can't see it with binoculars (on a clear day, flat plain, no wind... you get the picture). Man, I'm luckily I can even spell regex. In short, this cheat sheet was written just for me! I guess since it the holidays I can share though... :P

If I were really cool, I'd have created a regex that created that title instead of using literals... But today has been a long week and well, I guess I'll leave that as an exercise for all of you.

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200 C# Video Tutorials? 200 VB? JavaScript? PHP? C++? Python? All that and more on 'thenewboston'

thenewboston - Videos & Tutorials

Videos & Tutorials - C#

About thenewboston

How it all began...

My name is Bucky Roberts. I grew up in northern New York until I was 21 and then I moved down to Raleigh, North Carolina, where I live now. I began going to college down here but soon dropped out once I realized it wasn’t for me. Sure, I was interested in computers and web design, but most of the courses I was taking in college were totally unrelated. I dropped out figuring that I would be able to learn more on my own than any college could ever teach me. So I began reading computer books. A lot.

Shortly after reading a few books on web design, I was hooked. I wanted to know everything and anything about it. I was designing websites any chance I could. I spent almost all of my savings buying more books on different programming languages and other nerdy computer gear. I was addicted. The whole concept of computer and programming fascinated me. As I continued to study more and more, I began to realize that most of the books seemed to lack excitement. The material was useful, but they were far from entertaining. I tried to look online for a more interesting source of learning but to no success. That’s when I discovered YouTube.

My Youtube Experience

Sure, I’ve heard of YouTube before. Even watched videos on there sometimes. Most of them were music videos and of crazy cats, but I began to notice that some users were posting videos about computer topics as well. I soon found out that people were able to record their computer screen without a camcorder at all. I later found out that you could do this for free! Lucky for me, having spent all my money, and curious about anything computer related, I decided to give it a try. I tested out my new software by making some tutorials on web design. I created a YouTube account and decided to name it “thenewboston”. Sounded like a cool name at the time, right?

...

I soon realized that these videos were something more than just another cat video on YouTube. They were a gateway to a higher education, for free. While Universities and Corporations were charging like crazy for people to receive an education, people could come and watch my videos and get the same information for no cost at all. I decided that this is the way it would be. An education should be free for everyone who desires one. It should not be a business. And quickly, that became my goal.

The future of thenewboston

So here I am. 4 years / 178,000 Subscribers / 53 Million views later. I have expanded out of my bedroom to an office in a small town nearby. I have used my personal funds as well as the donations from my website to hire a two additional people to begin making tutorials, as well as purchase better equipment in order to make better quality videos. All of this, yet the costs remains the same for you all, free.

...

So this is my promise to you all. I will continue to work each and every day of my life until this goal is met. I will never sell out to a bigger corporation and I will never charge a single penny for any of these videos. There are some things that are much more important than money, and I believe that this is one of those things.

So to everyone, welcome to the beginning. The beginning of a new kind of education. Welcome to the beginning of an education revolution.

Welcome, to thenewboston.

This site came across my stream today and at first I wasn't so sure about it. I didn't really get why it was cool. Then I started looking at it a little longer. Slowly, slowly it began to dawn on my that this was actually a pretty awesome resource, all done my one guy and all free...

Then I read the About. NOW I really see the awesome that is this site. Drop by and check it out. I bet you'll find a great resource just waiting for you...

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What's the [table]diff? Diff'ing SQL Server tables with the Microsoft provided tablediff command line utility

simple talk - SQL Tools - SQL Server tablediff utility

Rob Sheldon continues on his quest to explain all those command-line tools such as SQLCMD, Logparser, SQLIO and tablediff that are part of SQL Server. TableDiff is great for comparing tables, as when you run automated tests that check a result against a table of expected values. The best way to learn TableDiff is to see it in action and Rob talks you through several examples.

Among the many command-line utilities provided with SQL Server, one of particular note is tablediff, a handy tool that lets you compare the data in two tables in order to identify any discrepancies. Though originally intended primarily as a utility for troubleshooting non-convergence in a replication topology, tablediff can actually be used to perform a row-by-row comparison of any two tables that share a similar schema so is ideal for running automated unit tests for database routines. In addition, you can use the tool to generate the T-SQL script necessary to update the data in the second table to conform to the first table, if discrepancies are found.

Getting Started with the tablediff Utility

The best way to learn how to use the tablediff utility is to see it in action. This article includes a number of examples that demonstrate how to compare tables that contain both matching and non-matching data. The tables in our examples reside in databases on different SQL Server instances, one SQL Server 2012, the other SQL Server 2008 R2, both installed on the same local system. However, you can compare any two tables—within the same database or within different databases on the same or different servers—so if you want to try out these examples on your system, modify the T-SQL code and example tablediff commands as necessary to accommodate your setup.

Now let’s get started. First we’ll compare identical tables on the two SQL Server instances. To prepare the environment, I ran the following code on each instance to create the TableDiffDB database and the DiffTest1 table within the database:

...

The tablediff utility compares the data in the source table to the table in the destination table. In the example above (as well as those to follow), the localhost\sqlsrv2012 instance serves as the source and the localhost\sqlsrv2008R2 instance serves as the destination. Be aware, however, that when using the tablediff utility to compare two tables, the source table must be configured with a primary key or an IDENTITY or ROWGUID column.

NOTE: The tablediff utility uses Windows authentication to connect to SQL Server. However, you can also specify a username and password when connecting to the source instance, the destination instance, or both. For information about the login-related options (as well as details about other tablediff options), see the Books Online topic “tablediff Utility.”

...

Making the Most of the tablediff Utility

If you haven’t already discovered the tablediff utility, you’ll find it well worth your time to check it out. The tool is part of the SQL Server installation and is relatively simple to use. Just open a command prompt window and start typing. Not only can you compare tables across SQL Server instances, but you can also generate the T-SQL scripts necessary to update those tables. And you can run the utility from within scripts created in command shells such as PowerShell, thus letting you automate operations and reuse code. The tablediff utility might not meet all your needs when comparing tables, but in those cases where it does, you’ll likely find tablediff to be a valuable addition to your arsenal of tools.

tablediff Utility

The tablediff utility is used to compare the data in two tables for non-convergence, and is particularly useful for troubleshooting non-convergence in a replication topology. This utility can be used from the command prompt or in a batch file to perform the following tasks:

• A row by row comparison between a source table in an instance of Microsoft SQL Server acting as a replication Publisher and the destination table at one or more instances of SQL Server acting as replication Subscribers.

• Perform a fast comparison by only comparing row counts and schema.

• Perform column-level comparisons.

• Generate a Transact-SQL script to fix discrepancies at the destination server to bring the source and destination tables into convergence.

• Log results to an output file or into a table in the destination database.

sigh... another day, another thing I didn't know. Why is it the older I get, the less I know? (What Yoda? You think, "Wisdom, on the road, you are...?" Byte me Yoda. You short little garden gnome looking...Oh damn. Did I say that out loud? ;)

Anyway...

There's a number of times where this free utility could have come in real handy. Now I just have to remember about it the next time I need something like it... :P

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Red Gate SSMS Ecosystem - The free SQL Server Management Studio Add-In Framework and Store (with both paid and free items)

simple talk - David Pond - Introducing the Red Gate SSMS Ecosystem

The Red Gate SSMS Ecosystem is a framework that makes it easy to develop, share and manage SSMS add-ins. We aim to help add-in developers build everything from homegrown solutions and community-driven projects to commercial solutions provided by partner companies. We hope that DBAs and database developers will benefit from better integrated tools.

Red Gate has lots of experience developing tools that integrate with SSMS. Over time, we’ve built a collection of common libraries and APIs that make developing SSMS add-ins much simpler. We’ve made these available free, so developers can build their own SSMS add-ins and integrate them with other tools.

The SSMS Ecosystem is a work in progress. Over time, we’ll be introducing new API features and adding add-ins to our directory. The initial benefit is the ability to integrate your tools with SSMS. In the future, we want to enable add-ins to use more Red Gate technologies and integrate with each other. Eventually, the SSMS Ecosystem will have a distribution platform similar to the Visual Studio Gallery where you can share, discover, and manage add-ins.

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The Red Gate SSMS Ecosystem is a framework that makes it easy to develop, share and manage SSMS add-ins. We aim to help add-in developers build everything from homegrown solutions and community-driven projects to commercial solutions provided by partner companies. We hope that DBAs and database developers will benefit from better integrated tools.

Red Gate has lots of experience developing tools that integrate with SSMS. Over time, we’ve built a collection of common libraries and APIs that make developing SSMS add-ins much simpler. We’ve made these available free, so developers can build their own SSMS add-ins and integrate them with other tools.

The SSMS Ecosystem is a work in progress. Over time, we’ll be introducing new API features and adding add-ins to our directory. The initial benefit is the ability to integrate your tools with SSMS. In the future, we want to enable add-ins to use more Red Gate technologies and integrate with each other. Eventually, the SSMS Ecosystem will have a distribution platform similar to the Visual Studio Gallery where you can share, discover, and manage add-ins.

SSMS ecosystem project

The SSMS ecosystem project aims to enhance the SQL Server Management Studio experience by enabling tighter integration of SQL Server tools. The project will make it easier for DBAs and developers to customize their SSMS environment and optimize it for their work.

Get started

1. Install the framework. Click here to download.
2. Visit our Add-in directory and install something.

Tool developers

The project should make it easier to add functionality to SSMS. We hope this will encourage many people to develop and share tools. If you would like to develop a plugin, visit our Writing an add-in page.

Note

The ecosystem has to benefit all participants; users of SSMS, plugin developers and Red Gate. We reserve the right to withdraw the ecosystem if this is not the case.

Getting started

Notes

Add-ins using .NET 4.0 runtime can't be loaded in SQL Server Management Studio 2008R2 and earlier. NET 3.5 runtimes can be loaded into all SQL Server Management Studio versions.

Shared interfaces

You can download the latest shared interfaces from here: https://github.com/red-gate/SIPFrameworkShared

Framework

You will need to install the add-in from SSMS ecosystem project.

Installation

You need to make an entry in the Registry to tell our add-in host where to load you add-in from. You should create the registry entry in either:

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Add-in directory

• Premium with 30-day free trial

  • SQL Enlight
  • SQL Prompt
  • SQL Source Control
  • SQL Test
  • T-SQL Source Code Unscrambler
• Free
  • SQL Search

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Free

SQL Search

Category: Navigation

SQL Search is an add-in for SQL Server Management Studio that lets you quickly search for SQL across your databases: find fragments of SQL text within stored procedures, functions, views and more; quickly navigate to objects wherever they happen to be on a server; find all references to an object.

Interesting project and one that I think there's a good deal of need for. Visual Studio has a very healthy Extension gallery, but SSMS much, much less so. If Red Gate by helping themselves also helps the community, well that's the definition of a win-win, isn't it?

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Two SQL Server Resources that you might want to take another look at...

Brent Ozar - Two SQL Server Resources That Improved When You Weren’t Looking

SQL Server learning materials seem to live at two extremes. Blog posts are short and to the point, but they don’t cover material in depth. Books are long and detailed, but to quote a famous philosopher, ain’t nobody got time for that.

Enter two resources that have been out for quite a while. They aim to cover subjects from start to finish, but in a way that you can digest in an hour.

Microsoft Books Online (Yes, Books Online!)

Microsoft Books Online earned a terrible reputation for being the last place you’d ever want to look for help. Look up the sys.databases view, for example, and you get gems like this:

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SQL Server Central Stairways

SSC’s Stairways series covers topics start to finish with 5-15 tutorials from one or two authors. I love the consistency on these – you can settle in with one author and really dig into a topic with a logical flow. Think of it as an interactive book chapter, often with lots of demos you can run to illustrate concepts.

They’ve added stairways for T-SQL, indexes,

..."

Remember when we all hated, or even worse, ignored with disdain, MSDN doc's? You might want to take another look at them. They've improved dramatically over the last few years, and dare I say it, are even really useful now. Useful to the point I'm suggesting to vendors that they might want to take a look at them as a model for their doc's...

Brent's also seen this in the SQL Server docs.

As for SSC’s Stairways, this is the first I've heard of that (well I've heard of SQL Server Central and read its feeds daily, but not its Stairways feature), so I guess I'm revisiting it for the first time. :/

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[Kickstarter of the Day]Making your paper airplane smart (and powered) - "PowerUp 3.0 - Smartphone Controlled Paper Airplane"

Kickstarter - PowerUp 3.0 - Smartphone Controlled Paper Airplane

PowerUp 3.0 turns your self-made paper airplane into a smartphone-controlled flying machine

1. Fold It: Simply fold a piece of copier paper into a paper airplane
2. Attach It: Attach the Smart Module to your paper plane with the patented clips underneath the Smart Module.
3. Connect It: Start the app to connect to the Smart Module with your iPhone.
4. Fly It: Push throttle to full and launch the paper airplane high up into the sky. Tilt your smartphone to the left or to the right to steer your plane, increase or reduce throttle to go up or down.

...

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Now if there was a Windows Phone or Windows Store App I'd be all over this. Even without it's pretty darn cool...

(via DIY Drones - PowerUp 3.0 - Smartphone Controlled Paper Airplane)

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Infographic for the English Grammar Challenged...

Daily Infographic - Basic English Grammar [infographic]

While English is my first language–and only fluent language–I sometimes have a hard time with its grammar, and I know I’m not the only one. I was an English major, and have only been out of school a few months now, but at times I can feel my basic grammar skills slipping away from me. Adjectives and tenses of words I have down pat, but some of the other English concepts mentioned in today’s graphic have become almost forgotten. (Spelling has started to get away from me too…thank goodness for spell check!)

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(via Visual.ly - http://visual.ly/basic-english-grammar)

I can hear you all already, "Oh yeah Greg, you SO need this..."  I say this with all due respect, um shut? (Or was it, "byte me"... hummmm... yeah... LOL  ;)

Anyway, I thought this a great 1,000 words kind of thing (and yeah, some I need... again, um... shut up?)

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Taking File Explorer to 11! (Okay 10... ) - 10 Tips about Windows 8.1. File Explorer you might not know

next of windows - 10 File Explorer Tips You May Not Know You Can Do in Windows 8.1

Because I deal with folders and files almost on daily basis, Windows Explorer, now called File Explorer in Windows 8, is still my best friend and the program I use the most on my day to day work. Guess what? I actually quite like what the new File Explorer offers. It’s powerful, smooth, efficient, and user friendly, even the Ribbon bar looks quite nice to me. You may not agree but let me share with you these tips you may not be aware that you can do in this version of File Explorer.

1. Things you can do with Easy Access

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There are a number of cool features and tips in this article. Some I knew but a bunch I didn't. If you use the Windows 8.1. File Explorer you should scan this article...

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Creating Per-Monitor DPI-Aware Applications Code Sample

Microsoft Developer Network - Samples - Per-Monitor Aware WPF Sample

This sample demonstrates updating a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application to be per-monitor DPI-aware.

The sample consists of two projects:

• NativeHelpers.vcxproj The native helper project that implements the core functionality to make a WPF application per-monitor DPI-aware
• WPFApplication.csproj A sample WPF application that inherits from the PerMonitorDPIWindow base class and showcases how the application window resizes when the user moves the window to another monitor with a different DPI or when the user changes the DPI by adjusting the Display slider in Control Panel.

...

In the coming year we're going to start seeing more and more of this, where our uses not only have multiple monitors but have them set at different DPI settings. This code sample will help you handle that gracefully in your LOB/WPF applications.

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Windows 8.1 Store App Paper Prototyping Templates

Jason Roberts Don't Code Tired - Paper Prototyping Templates for Windows 8.1 Store Apps

These are updated paper prototyping templates for Windows 8.1 Store apps.

The changes from the previous 8.0 versions are mostly to do with the removal of snapped and filled modes in Windows 8.1 Store apps; there are new versions for the new default minimum width of 500px and also for the optional minimum width of 320px.

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Perfect Meeting-ware. Print out some of these bring them to your next meeting and you'll seem really engaged as you scratch away making those "notes" in your notebook. :)

To get them, just click through, right click on them and Save...

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Having your Amiga and Pi to... Using Raspberry Pi to Emulate an Amiga 500 Floppy Drive

Hack A Day - Raspberry Pi Emulates an Amiga 500 Floppy Drive

[Maurizio] loves using his Amiga 500. His classic piece of hardware has been serving him well for years, except for the floppy drive, which recently gave out on him. No problem for [Maurizio], he just cracked his case open and added a Raspberry Pi as a real-time floppy emulator. [Maurizio] didn’t want to make any permanent changes to his A500 case, and more importantly he wanted to use the Amiga’s original floppy drive interface. The latter placed some rather stringent timing requirements on his design.

The interface hardware is relatively simple. Most of the circuit is dedicated to level shifting from the 5v Amiga 500 to the 3.3V Raspberry Pi. A 74LS06 Hex inverter converts the signals to the open collector outputs the A500 requires. [Maurizio] powered his Raspberry Pi from the floppy power connector of the Amiga. His model A Raspberry Pi works fine, but a model B would pull a bit more power (700ma) than the Amiga floppy power supply is capable of providing (550ma). The user interface side of the equation is simple: Two buttons, one used to switch disks, and one to “Write to SD”. Live disk images are stored in the Raspberry Pi’s ram, so the user needs to hit the “Write to SD” button to store any changes to disk before swapping floppies.

The software is perhaps the most interesting portion of this build. ...

My week is not complete unless I hunt down that off the wall Amiga news item, post or project. This is the top for the month. :)

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[Humor] Death by Cube...

Agile Scout - The Slow Cubicle Death – Welcome to Corporate America [Funny]

This guy does say:

“Pushing me to the brink of homicide… maybe lose my mind… maybe kill him.”

Since people at work might (maybe, could be, okay they never do, but just in case...) I'm going to keep my comments to myself. But I did have a sympathetic laugh at this this morning...

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Happy VM Day! The Visual Studio 2013 RTM ALM Virtual Machine is now available

Brian Keller just shot me this email and I thought it important to blog about is ASAP (so you have a chance to download the VM's while on a faster work network... ;)

Just in time for Thanksgiving, I’m pleased to announce that the Visual Studio 2013 RTM ALM Virtual Machine is now available!

This virtual machine replaces the previous Visual Studio 2013 ALM virtual machine which was based on Preview bits. This is a publicly downloadable set of content, so you may feel free to share this with your customers, partners, etc. It’s designed to be both a tool for demonstrating our ALM story and as a self-paced training environment for learning how to use our ALM tools.

This virtual machine is configured with: · Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Standard Evaluation · Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 · Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 · Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook) · Microsoft Visio Professional 2013 · Microsoft Release Management for Visual Studio 2013 · Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Standard · Sample users and data required to support hands-on-lab scripts which accompany this download and exercise 4 new ALM scenarios.

Public URL: http://aka.ms/vs13almvm

More ALM virtual machines and hands-on-labs / demo scripts (including VS 2012, Project Server/TFS, and SCOM/TFS) can be found at http://aka.ms/ALMVMs.

What’s next? In the next sprint we will be working on the following:

• Porting the hands-on-labs, demo scripts, and sample data from the VS 2012 ALM virtual machine to work with the Visual Studio 2013 ALM virtual machine.
• Building a set of assets and scripts to enable the Microsoft field to effectively learn and demonstrate Application Insights.

Enjoy!

Brian Keller
Principal Technical Evangelist
Visual Studio ALM
Blog: blogs.msdn.com/briankel
ALM 2012 Book: Professional ALM with Visual Studio 2012
TFS 2012 Book: Professional Team Foundation Server 2012
Visual Studio ALM Demos / hands-on-labs

Related Past Post XRef:
The HOL "Building a Release Pipeline with Team Foundation Server 2012" thing
Featuring Agile Planning and Portfolio Management with TFS2013 in these Hands On Labs
Visual Studio 2013 ALM and HOL VM now available...
VS2012 Update 1 ALM VM and HOL / Demo Scripts now available
The VS 2012 ALM Virtual Machine and VS 2012 Update 1 (In short, there's an updated VM coming, don't install it on this VM if you don't have too)
The big BK has updated the Visual Studio 2012 RC ALM Virtual Machine and Hands-on-Labs
VS 11 ALM DemoMates updated for the Beta
Visual Studio/TFS11 ALM Demo's... Mate! See the VS/TFS 11 ALM's hands-on-labs in DemoMate form
Visual Studio 11 ALM VHD's, VirtualBoxed (and even on x86 hosts too)
Want to play with Visual Studio 11 & TFS 11 Dev Preview but don't want to install it (and have access to a Hyper-V server)? Here's a VHD just for

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Being smart when opening SkyDrive Smart Files in Desktop app's/ .Net

.NET Framework Blog - Opening Files from SkyDrive using .NET

Summary First;

Summary

SkyDrive for Windows 8.1 introduced a new technology, called smart files. These files can be consumed just like regular files by using Windows Runtime APIs. However, applications that uses System.IO APIs will have problems when opening a smart file unless its content is fully downloaded on the device. With this blog post, we provided you a sample code that invokes Windows.Storage APIs by reflection. This sample code will enable you to write desktop apps that operates on smart files available on Windows 8.1 and also supports running on non-Windows Runtime platforms.

Back to the top;

Since Windows 8 I fell in love with SkyDrive and use it all the time now. Windows 8.1 has improved this a lot by introducing a new concept that requires some changes to the way you interact with files. In, this post Gaye Oncul Kok, Program Manager on the .NET Framework team, explains the key things .NET developers need to know when they read and write files stored on SkyDrive.

SkyDrive for Windows 8.1 introduced a new technology, called smart files, which gives access to the files in the cloud by providing their content on demand. The technology was designed to minimize the disk space utilization on your Windows 8.1 device. You can think of the smart files as the avatars of your cloud files on a device. They have the same appearance as regular files, allowing you to browse, search and do common file operations like viewing the properties or a thumbnail of the file without downloading the full content locally. When you want to open the file, or explicitly want to make it available offline, only then are the file’s contents streamed to your device.

...

SkyDrive's placholder files are smaller

From a .NET developers’ perspective, if you are developing a Windows Store App or a desktop app targeting platforms that has Windows Runtime support, your app can consume smart files just like regular files by using Windows.Storage APIs. However, applications that depend on .NET Framework System.IO APIs, such as File.Open() or FileInfo.Open(), will have problems, when operating on a smart file unless its content is fully downloaded on the device. This is due to the fact that the smart files are supported in the Windows Shell layer and above, whereas System.IO APIs resides on the Win32 layer.

If you want your desktop app to run on non-Windows Runtime platforms, such as Windows 7, and also work with SkyDrive smart files available with Windows 8.1 you can either use the related Shell APIs through COM-interop and platform invocations or provide two different implementations and distribute two versions of your app; one for Windows Runtime and the other for non-Windows Runtime platforms. There is a third option, which is provided in sample code. This code uses reflection to utilize Windows.Storage APIs, such as StorageFile.GetFileFromPathAsync and StorageFile.OpenAsync(), if the Windows Runtime types are available on the platform or falls back to System.IO APIs otherwise.

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Sample Code to Open Smart Files in .NET Desktop Apps

Introduction

SkyDrive for Windows 8.1 introduced a new technology, called smart files, which gives access to the files in the cloud by providing their content on demand.  If you are developing a Windows Store App or a desktop app targeting platforms that has Windows Runtime support, your app can consume smart files just like regular files by using Windows.Storage APIs. However, applications that depend on .NET Framework System.IO APIs, such as File.Open() or FileInfo.Open(), will have problems, when operating on a smart file unless its content is fully downloaded on the device. This is due to the fact that the smart files are supported in the Windows Shell layer and above, whereas System.IO APIs resides on the Win32 layer.

If you want your desktop app to run on non-Windows Runtime platforms, such as Windows 7, and also work with SkyDrive smart files available with Windows 8.1 you can use this sample code to call  using reflection Windows.Storage APIs, such as StorageFile.GetFileFromPathAsync and StorageFile.OpenAsync(), if the Windows Runtime types are available on the platform or falls back to System.IO APIs otherwise.

Building the Sample

The sample contains one solution file: WindowsRuntimeLightup.sln. This solution file includes a single class library project: WindowsRuntimeLightup.csproj that targets .NET 4.5. This project can be built in VS 2012 or VS 2013. Since the calls to Windows Runtime APIs are through reflection,  no special project setting are required for using Windows Runtime APIs. After building the project, the output class library, WindowsRuntimeLightup.dll can be referenced in .NET desktop applications.

Description

This code uses reflection to utilize Windows.Storage APIs, such as StorageFile.GetFileFromPathAsync and StorageFile.OpenAsync(), if the Windows Runtime types are available on the platform or falls back to System.IO APIs otherwise.

The code provides the following public static methods in SmartFileLightUp class:

...

With this sample your app can be automagically adaptive and use the best API for your SkyDrive file access needs.

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