Rhonda Tipton's WebLog

SQL Join Resources

Rhonda Tipton — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:30:31 +0000

A Join combines records from two (or more) tables to create a new data set. There are several ways to join SQL tables. Below are the most common Joins.

INNER Join – Result will contain matching records from both tables
LEFT Join – Result will contain all records from the “left” table even if the join-condition does not find any matching record in the “right” table
RIGHT Join - Result will contain all records from the “right” table even if the join-condition does not find any matching record in the “left” table
FULL Join – Result will contain all records from both tables, and fill in NULLs for missing matches on either side
CROSS Join – Result will contain returns the cartesian product of the sets of records from the two joined tables (Dangerous with large tables)

Instead of including all the normal code snippets illustrating each type of join, I am listing links to others who have done that job very well.

Jeff Atwood gives a wonderful Visual Explanation of SQL Joins. He describes each join in detail.
Kathi Kellenberger posted a great article on Writing Outer Joins in T-SQL. She gives a brief review of the INNER Join, then goes on to a much more detailed description of OUTER Joins.
Jeff Smith gives us a warning to Be Careful When Mixing INNER and OUTER Joins. Warnings are always a great way to learn from other people’s experiences.
Kenneth Downs created a very informative post about Joins titled The JOIN is the Cornerstone of Powerful Queries. This article too, provides an abundance of information about Joins.
Jason Massie suggested a great set of articles on joins from Craig Freedman. There looks to be some in-depth information on joins here.

The above articles are ones the I will likely reference over and over again.

Weekly Link Post 48

Rhonda Tipton — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:17:22 +0000

This is is my weekly link post. It is here that I note the web sites and posts that I have run across that interest me - whether it be related to work or play.

Application Development/Design

Scott Hanselman continues his great link series with The Weekly Source Code 29.
Ken Egozi talks about FTP operations in his post FTP Upload in .NET - You ain’t need no libraries.
David Cumps has started a detailed series on the subject of Design Patterns: Strategy Pattern ~ Observer Pattern ~ Observer/Event Pattern
Greg Duncan has posted an article on Interactive F# in Visual Studio.
Scott Hanselman talks about the var keyword in the post Back to Basics: var != Dim.
Mads Kristensen explains How to use the IHttpAsyncHandler in ASP.NET.
Found a good article on DigCode titled Understanding Structs in C#.
Karl Seguin has released a free ebook titled Foundations of Programming. Sweet!!
Tutorial Video(s): Querying XML Data using XLinq ~ Exploring Extension Methods in C# 3.0 ~ Pass Info From 1 Pg to Another Using a Query String
Article(s) from Code project: Demystify LINQ in 10 minutes
Snippet(s): Events and Delegates

SQL Server & PowerShell

Great SQL Server posts from Jason Massie. SQL Server 2008 to increase slacking off at work by at least 15% ~ Open Source SQL Server projects on CodePlex
Joe Webb explains how to find IDENTITY columns in SQL Server. Great tip.

Houston Area & Regional Technology Events

Houston Area User Group Meetings - This is my monthly listing of Houston area user group meetings.
Keith Elder has posted his Slide Deck for Lansing DODN.

Internet, Software and General Technology

Alvin Ashcraft shares a list of his essential developement tools.
Looks like Evernote is now in Open Beta.
Good review of RSS Bandit. Maybe I’ll give it a try.
Maggie Longshore has posted a great review of the Flock Web Browser. Looks like a useful tool for social networks.

Blogging and Social Networking

Cool. Fail Whale accessories.
Markus Egger tells us why he uses Twitter.

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

Jamie Nischan has guest posted on Lifehack about 3 Ways to Hack Your Fitness Routine.
Craig Bailey talks about what he believes makes Great Developers.
A couple of co-workers turned me on to a Tech salary site called Glassdoor.com.
Dumb Little Man has posted a great list of 14 Simple Ways to Super Charge Your Brain.

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else

Steve Muth talks about Magnificent Jupiter.
This is an interesting study that compares a very low carb diet to the Big Breakfast Diet.
Interesting little site that tells you how many people in the US have your name.
Barkability has discovered a nice pet artwork site called Heal! Good Dog. I’m thinking about buying the Coffee with Lulu shirt.
Movie Trailers: Hancock ~ The Mummy – Tomb of the Dragon Emperor ~ Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Funny Dilberts this week: 6/24 ~ 6/26 ~ 6/29

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Great Link Blog Sources

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Happy Surfing.

Dime Casts - Great Ten Minute Development Tutorials

Rhonda Tipton — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:38:03 +0000

Derik Whittaker has started a great video tutorial site called Dime Casts. The tutorials are just the right length to fit into a busy day.

There are videos on LINQ2SQL, Extension Methods and Visual Studio just to name a few and more are being added often. The videos are also downloadable in two resolutions or you can just watch them online.

Dime Casts are a great way to learn new technology ten minutes at a time.

If you use Twitter, don’t forget to follow DimeCastsDotNet.

Weekly Link Post 47

Rhonda Tipton — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:14:06 +0000

This is is my weekly link post. It is here that I note the web sites and posts that I have run across that interest me - whether it be related to work or play.

Application Development/Design

Jeff Atwood talks about a great C# compiler trick in his post Department of Declaration Redundancy Department.
Richard Dingwall talks about the C# var keyword in his post C# 3.0’s var keyword: Jeff Atwood gets it all wrong.
Marco Russo provides some great information on LINQ joins in the article To join or not to join: that is the question (in LINQ).
JP Hamilton explains how to compile code dynamically using the .NET Framework in his post Dynamic Compilation.
David Vidmar explains an issue he ran into in his article LINQ: Detecting if entity is already pending insert.
BlackWasp has posted a couple of informative articles. Converting an Entire Array to a New Type ~ Speed Test: Try / Catch Block
Rick Strahl asks the question What makes a Guru?. Great post.
Jason Young gives a great review of the book Agile Principles, Patterns and Practices in C#.
Tutorial Video(s): How Do I: Work with Nested Master Pages to Create Standard Content Layouts
Article(s) from Code project: Delegates, Events, Event Arguments & How They Fit Together ~ Convert to TryParse ~ C# Coding Practicies Guide
Tip(s): Use the immediate window as a glorified calculator or side-debugger within your debugger

SQL Server & PowerShell

Craig Baily has posted some great information on SQL Server 2008.
Simon Sabin has posted some great information on the new features of SQL Server 2008. MERGE and optimistic concurrency ~ MERGE/TVP data access pattern w/ DataAdapters ~ MERGE and Table Valued Parameters
Mark Garner has posted about a list of Very Cool SQL Utilities.
Found this article on InfoQ about SQL Server PowerShell Extensions.

Houston Area & Regional Technology Events

Houston Area User Group Meetings - This is my monthly listing of Houston area user group meetings.

Internet, Software and General Technology

Chris Love reviews a Regular Expression Visualizer - A Must Have Tool.
Max Poole reviews SlickEdit Tools.
Jay Smith has posted on a couple of software releases. Windows Live Writer CTP Released ~ ReSharper 4.0 Gone Gold!

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

Misty Kahn talks about Using Outlook to Get Back on Track. Welcome back Misty.
The Positivity Blog gives us 7 Ways to Reduce Stress With a To-Don’t List.
I’m always looking for ways to eat healthier (even though I don’t like veggies). I ran across a post from TechieMom on what Plan of Action (with eating) to take depending on your mood. If you are an emotional eater, as I am, there is some good information here.

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else

Pictures of the ice on Mars from the Astronomy Picture of the Day.
News came this week (from the Phoenix Lander) of water on Mars. Very cool stuff…
Timbuk2 is an interesting messenger bag manufacturer that allows you to totally customize your bag. It’s a little pricey, but I had fun customizing.
Steve Muth has posted an interesting article on his very cool Astronomy blog that talks about a Quest for a new home: Moon, asteroid or Mars.
Review of the mid-season finale of Battlestar Galactica. If you have not seen the episode, you might not want to read the review.
Ran into a review of the new series Fringe on Ain’t it Cool News.
Movie Trailers: Wall-E ~ Wanted ~ Mirrors
Funny Dilberts this week: 6/16 ~ 6/21 ~ 6/22

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Great Link Blog Sources

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Happy Surfing.

Weekly Link Post 46

Rhonda Tipton — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:48:21 +0000

This is is my weekly link post. It is here that I note the web sites and posts that I have run across that interest me - whether it be related to work or play.

Application Development/Design

Scott Hanselman has posted a great article titled Back to Basics - Life After If, For and Switch - Like, a Data Structures Reminder.
Timm Martin talks in depth about the C# Empty Enumerator.
Mohammad Azam shows us how to Dynamically Assign Parameters to SQLDataSource.
Matt Berseth has created an outstanding site for his ASP.NET Demo Gallery. I agree with Steve Pietrek, there is some awesome stuff here.
Lars Corneliussen has posted a great article on the yield keyword titled Behind the scenes of the C# yield keyword.
Scott Hanselman continues his great link series with The Weekly Source Code 28.
Mohammad Azam has posted a great article on Creating Code Documentation Using XML Comments and XSLT.
Shahed Khan talks about the automatic property in the post C# 3.0 tips, Automatic Property.
Scott Mitchell has published Two New Master Page Tutorials.
Tutorial Video(s): Creating Snippets in Visual Studio.
Article(s) from Code project: Understanding .NET Delegates and Events, By Practice ~
Snippet(s): none
Tip(s): Increase your VS environment fonts for presentations ~ VS has a file window layout mode that you can customize ~ Set a breakpoint on a function from the Find Combo Box ~ Insert a snippet via “tab tab”

SQL Server & PowerShell

Kenneth Downs talks about the numerous uses of the data dictionary in his post Using a Data Dictionary.
Jason Massie gives a great review of Quest PowerGUI.
Brent Ozar talks about his Webcasts on clustered indexes, defrags, SQL consolidation.
Snippet(s): Get days in a month

Houston Area & Regional Technology Events

Houston Area User Group Meetings - This is my monthly listing of Houston area user group meetings.

Internet, Software and General Technology

Found a great article on FreelanceSwitch that lists some Killer Tools to Get The Most Out of Your USB Thumb Drive.
Jet Brains has released ReSharper 4.0 GA.
The Google Docs Blog announces PDF support in Google Docs in the article Upload your PDFs!.
Digital Streets shows us How to Concatenate Text in a Spreadsheet.

Blogging and Social Networking

Dustin Wax gives advice on How to Write in 140 Characters or Less.

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

Jason Young has posted a wonderful article titled What a developer needs from their manager. I agree with each and every point.

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else

Good update on New Horizons from Space.com.
Movie Trailers: Death Race ~ The X-Files: I Want To Believe ~ Babylon AD
Funny Dilberts this week: 6/15

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Great Link Blog Sources

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Happy Surfing.

Enthusiasm & Passion for Programming

Rhonda Tipton — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:09:36 +0000

I am currently working in a large company as a Developer/Analyst. I work primarily with Visual FoxPro (Mid-Senior Level), but am striving to learn .NET (Beginner).

We are migrating our legacy software which is written in DOS FoxPro 2.5, VFP 3.0 and VFP 7.0 to .NET. The new Windows application includes a WPF/C# front end and SQL Server back end. We have a team that maintains the legacy applications (which is the one that I am on) and a team that is building the new application. Sometimes, the lines cross and I do get to work on the new software. Because the lines do not cross as much as I would like, I find myself having to find ways to keep my enthusiasm at a decent level.

Every now and then I run across blogs and podcasts that help me with my enthusiasm and passion for development. Last week’s Hanselminutes on the subject of Finding Passion for Software is a great example of the kind of content that really turns my thinking around - "maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel".

Below are some things that I do to keep myself enthusiastic:

Attend User Group meetings and Code Camps/Tech Fests - I cannot afford to go to big conventions like TechEd and VSLive, so free local area events are the next best thing.
Read development books and publications - There is so much content online, but I still feel that a hard copy every now and then is needed. I subscribe to CoDe Magazine, MSDN Magazine and SQL Server Magazine as well as try to keep a book with me at all times. That way even if I don’t have access to the internet, I can keep my learning in motion.
Listen to Podcasts on Development and general technology - there is a plethora of podcasts out there and new ones starting up constantly.
Watch online videos - Again, there is a ton of online tutorials. (Dime Casts, How Do I Videos, ASP.NET Tutorials, GridView Guy Video Tutorials)
Subscribe to blogs (XML)
Social Networking - There are a lot of Developers on Twitter and FriendFeed. You really pick up a lot of information following other people in the Development Community.

In closing, my current work situation sometimes makes it difficult to stay interested in my chosen profession, but thanks to the abundant amount of resources, I seem to stay interested and enthused.

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Related Content

HDNUG Meeting - 06/12/08 - Recap

Rhonda Tipton — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:10:36 +0000

I attended the June Houston .NET User Group meeting tonight. There were about 55 people in attendance which is a pretty good turnout. Still enough people to keep me from winning any door prizes.

The sponsor was Pariveda Solutions, an information services technology company.

Michael Steinberg , the HDNUG President, gave a high-level talk on the new features SQL Sever 2008. His talk was followed by an overview of Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7, given by John Hellman, the HDNUG Vice President.

Other information provided

In July, Marcus Egger will be speaking on the subject of Silverlight
The 2008 Houston TechFest will be held September 13th at University of Houston

All in all, it was an evening of great information.

Book Review: C# In Depth

Rhonda Tipton — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:20:28 +0000

C# In Depth
Author: Jon Skeet
Publisher: Manning
No. Pages: 392

Jon Skeet does a great job of demonstrating the differences between the features of C# 1, 2 and 3. An abundant amount of detail is provided on the history of the features and how they evolved into C# 3. There are also some great analogies used throughout the book.

In my opinion this book is a perfect size. It is 392 pages, but really seems like more due to the amount of detail.

Some of the major items this book covers -

Generics
Delegates
Anonymous Methods
Partial Types
Expression Trees

In closing, this is a great book for intermediate to advanced developers. I believe even beginners will pick up some great concepts.

Happy reading…

Weekly Link Post 45

Rhonda Tipton — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 21:10:15 +0000

This is is my weekly link post. It is here that I note the web sites and posts that I have run across that interest me - whether it be related to work or play.

Application Development/Design

BlackWasp has published an article that explains C# Implicitly Typed Variables. They talk about the var keyword (new to C# 3) which can be used to implicitly type a variable. Before C# 3, variables were only explicitly typed.
In her post F# Mutable vs Redefine, Amanda Laucher talks about how to change an identifier’s value in F# even though all values are immutable.
I ran across a good article on Object Reference .NET that demonstrates how to give enums more readable names: Enum to Friendly String Extension Method
Great article on GridViewGuy titled Creating Rounded Corners Using Only CSS.
BlackWasp has posted a good article explaining C# Anonymous Types.
Kevin Miller has posted a great article on Cleanly Handling Ctrl-C In Console Applications.
Mohammad Azam provides his take on the Future of .NET.
Jimmy Bogard provides great detail on Some improved LINQ operators. The improvements make for cleaner implementations.
Joe White has posted very detailed notes from TechEd 2008: #1 ~ #2 ~ #3 ~ #4 ~ #5 ~ #6 ~ #7 ~ #8 ~ #9 ~ #10
Article(s) from Code project: Basic C# Web Browser in Visual Studio 2008 ~ Simple LINQ to SQL in C# ~ The differences between Cache, Session & ViewState
Snippet(s): ZipCode Struct With Parser ~
Tip(s): —

SQL Server & PowerShell

Good article on SQLServerPedia that talks about the use of SQLCMD to detach a DB, move the trans log and reattache the DB.
Denis Gobo has posted an article on Less Than Dot listing some Good SQL Articles To Read If You Can’t Afford Books.
Jeremy Jamison provides a way to Count Rows in All Databases.
Kimberly Tripp continues her explanation of Indexes in SQL Server 2005/2008 - Part 2 - Internals.
Snippet(s): Get days in a month

Houston Area & Regional Technology Events

Houston Area User Group Meetings - This is my monthly listing of Houston area user group meetings.

Internet, Software and General Technology

Goosh.Org is a pretty cool shell environment for Google. I am not sure how much I would use it, but it is cool.
Shawn Wildermuth linked (via Twitter) to this cool AJAX Diagonal Stripes Background Designer.

Blogging and Social Networking

Michael Koby gives his take on the different social networks in his post Twitter vs. FriendFeed vs. Jaiku.
Jeff Atwood talks about a service called Yelp and ethics in the post Please Give Us Your Email Password.

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

Jarkko Laine provides some great advice on eliminating distractions: Eliminate Distraction: The 8 Things to Let Go First.
Sarah Dutkiewicz gives her opinions on the Deep Fried Bytes podcast as well as some of her adventures in interviewing: Deep Fried Bytes : Interview War Stories
Dumb Little Man posted a couple of good articles this week: 7 Websites You MUST Check Before You Go On A Vacation ~ 8 Useful Tips To Manage And Avoid RSS Overload.
Gretchen Rubin lists 8 Tips for Making Yourself Happier in the Next Hour. Some pretty good tips.
Rick Strahl talks about his Levels of Enthusiasm.
StationStops provides us with the Top 10 Tips for Working From Home. Tip #3 is important to me whether I work at home or in a cubicle at the office.

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else

The Diet blog lists 7 Gym Exercises You Need to Avoid.
Dwight Silverman has started a series reviews of Houston-area coffee shops that offer Wi-Fi. The first review is for Catalina Coffee.
Movie Trailers: The Happening
Funny Dilberts this week: 6/2 ~ 6/4 ~ 6/5

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Great Link Blog Sources

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Happy Surfing.

File Compression Using the .NET GZipStream Class

Rhonda Tipton — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 23:48:28 +0000

The GZipStream class is a part of the System.IO.Compression namespace. This class is used for the compression of data. Before the .NET 2.0 Framework, the only choice we had for compression were third party tools.

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Common Methods (Full List)

BeginRead - Begins an asynchronous read operation.
BeginWrite - Begins an asynchronous write operation.
Close - Closes the current stream and releases any resources (such as sockets and file handles) associated with the current stream.
EndRead - Waits for the pending asynchronous read to complete.
EndWrite - Handles the end of an asynchronous write operation.
Read - Reads a number of decompressed bytes into the specified byte array.
Write - Writes compressed bytes to the underlying stream from the specified byte array.

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Below is a simple C# console application that takes an input file, compresses it and creates a compressed zip file.

C# Listing

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.IO.Compression;

public class GZipTest
{
    private static void usage()
    {
        Console.WriteLine(“My test GZip program”);
        Console.WriteLine(“gziptest [filename to be compressed]“);
    }

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        if (args.Length < 1)
        {
            usage();
            return;
        }
        else
        {
            string inputFile = args[0];
            string outputFile = inputFile + “.gz”;

            try
            {
                // Get bytes from input stream
                FileStream inFileStream = new FileStream(Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, inputFile), FileMode.Open);
                byte[] buffer = new byte[inFileStream.Length];
                inFileStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
                inFileStream.Close();

                // Create GZip file stream and compress input bytes
                FileStream outFileStream = new FileStream(Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, outputFile), FileMode.Create);
                GZipStream compressedStream = new GZipStream(outFileStream, CompressionMode.Compress);
                compressedStream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
                compressedStream.Close();
                outFileStream.Close();

                Console.WriteLine(“The file has been compressed.  UR Da Bomb!!!”);
            }
            catch(FileNotFoundException)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(“Error: Specified file cannot be found.”);
            }
        }
    }
}

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The command-line illustration below shows the application at work.

If no argument is provided, the usage syntax is echoed to the screen
If the argument provided cannot be located, error is echoed to the screen
If correct argument is provided, the file is compressed and a new file is created

The result (compressed) file created.

View the compressed file in a Zip application.

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The GZipStream class is not as feature-rich as the third-party tools, but it is a convenient way to compress data.

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Related Content

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Happy programming…