Talk about Technologies, Software Architecture and Management

HD DVD v Blu-Ray: Part 3 – Story continues

I am trying to follow up on the what is appeared to be a death of HD-DVD format. Is there a new nail into HD-DVD coffin? Read an article at BetaNews. Below are some sources: Amazon.com to Support Blu-ray as the Digital Format of Choice for Customers Universal Studios Goes Blu-ray Disc Is it over? Is there a chance for rebound? Might be not. But… there is always a chance to start a new “war” with “new and better” format. Meanwhile on Feb 19, 2008 your HD-DVD player become just another upconvert model for regular DVD and remaining HD-DVD: Dear loyal Toshiba customer, Toshiba America Consumer Products, L.L.C. (“Toshiba”) announced on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 that it has completed a thorough Read more

By Serguei Dosyukov, ago

Looking for good tires? Try Nokian

Living in Wisconsin one is faced a decision to have two sets of tires or have very good all-season set. Two sets is good but costly, where all-seasons might have not that good on snow or ice. This is a situation when Nokian will give you a very good alternative – people in Finland do respect snow 🙂 After trying Nokian WR on my Altima for a few months (replacing Yokohama’s), I have installed second set of Nokian WR G2 (a newer version of the same tire model) on my Accord just before main snowfall (replacing Michelin). What can I say, it was a very good decision so far. We have had a lot of snow this winter along with rain (read a Read more

By Serguei Dosyukov, ago

.Net Source is now Open – part 2

As it appeared Microsoft did not stopped at changing licensing for .Net source code. As it was reported by BetaNews this Friday Now developers no longer need to request access to the binary file format (for Office 2003) documentation in writing or by mail, the spokesperson said; they can now download all the documentation they need directly from Microsoft Read a full story here. PS. There is a small thing in the air – are all those changes because Bill is stepping aside? Off course not 😉

By Serguei Dosyukov, ago

File management from inside SQL code

Writing a log, dumping data, looking for file to be used in Bulk insert…

There are many situations when you would want to have access to files from inside your SQL code on Microsoft SQL Server.

Did you know that you actually can do this? No? Check below for code snippets to perform various operations on files. It is presented in form of the functions but you are actually not limited to that

Prerequisites and assumptions

  1. Your script should have sufficient rights to perform required access to files (not necessarily local).
  2. Scripting.FileSystemObject should be present at your SQL Server location and accessible.

Check if file exists
(more…)

By Serguei Dosyukov, ago

Are Developers Hurting SOA?

In his SD Times’ article Why Some Developers Are Hurting SOA David S. Linthicum is discussing some of aspects of mutual relationship between Developers and Software Architecture. …hard truth is that most developers don’t think about architecture, but focus more on the latest tools, languages and platforms. They are more concerned about how things are built, versus why they are built, or, more importantly, how software systems work and play well with other systems. That thought pattern needs to come to a quick end Is it really? Being a developer for over 15 years and being a Product Manager/Architect for almost half of this time, I can see from both sides. Are developers so reluctant about architecture or they are not Read more

By Serguei Dosyukov, ago

.Net Source is now Open? Almost

Microsoft was accused for many years in their secrecy about internals of the Frameworks and being overprotective when it comes to the point of someone looking at it. No-one was allowed to look at the code for the purpose of to see how it works. I, as a Pascal/Delphi developer for many years, enjoyed availability of internal source code of components and system functionality since it was always part of Delphi as we know it. Well… it is about to change for MS code as well… not all the way… but… In SD Times’ “.Net Source Code Released” from February 15, 2008 it is confirmed that Microsoft is changing its license policy in regard to source from “The .NET Framework Read more

By Serguei Dosyukov, ago

SQL date operations: First day, Last day of the month…

Did you ever faced a situation when you need quickly calculate some boundaries of the Date value like First Day of the month, Last Day of the month, etc… in T-SQL? Colegue of mine asked me this question… WOW! What do you know… It is actually very easy if we think about it for a second… So lets fun begin… –First Day of the Current Month: select DATEADD(mm, DATEDIFF(mm, 0, GETDATE()), 0) — Last Day of the Current Month: select DATEADD(ms, -3, DATEADD(mm, DATEDIFF(m, 0, GETDATE()) + 1, 0)) — Last Day of Prior Month: select DATEADD(ms, -3, DATEADD(mm, DATEDIFF(mm, 0, GETDATE()), 0)) — First Day of the Current Year: select DATEADD(yy, DATEDIFF(yy, 0, GETDATE()), 0) — Last Day of the Read more

By Serguei Dosyukov, ago