I would like to share one of my favorite utility tools with you. PowerMenu is the collection of extensions to the window menu which really save me when I am working with lot of application at a time. Following are the listing of those extensions:
Priority > Changes the priority of the window's parent process
Transparency > Changes the transparency level of the window (Windows 2K/XP only)
Always On Top > Makes the window sit on top of other windows even if it doesn't have focus.
Minimize To Tray > Remove the window from the task-list and places the window's on the system tray.
Most of the time my task bar is filled with some of the applications every time. These applications like CVS, Explorer, TextPad, Browser (IE2) and some word documents etc. Even though I need CVS once in a hour, but I prefer to keep open every time. It’s my habit!!! :) Same goes to utilities TextPad (with very small size and always on top mode) and IE2 as well. This results with lot of application taking my “precious” place in task bar. So PowerMenu utility comes handy to move some of the “required” application to system bar to make task bar more cleaner.
You can download it from following URL:
http://www.veridicus.com/tummy/programming/powermenu/
I have created a small batch file and placed it into the Startup folder so that I don’t need to run every time. Batch file contains following command:
PowerMenu.BAT
"E:\Utilities\PowerMenu\PowerMenu.exe" -hideself on
Thanks Thong Nguyen for this handy utility!!
It now becomes a UI standard for displaying records in paginated grid format. If you have list of employees then you always wanted to only show 10 (or something) at a time. And if user wants to see next set of employees he should click on the next button which will pull next set of 10 employees. So this way, every time you will have controlled limit of payload which will pass from server to browser.
There is a common technique used by developers to use induced a primary key in my temporary table and show paginated records from there. You must wanted to learn that approach. Visit:
Manual Paging, part I
http://mceahern.manilasites.com/dotnet/pagingpart1
Paging: Use ADO, getrows, or a Stored Procedure?
http://www.15seconds.com/issue/010308.htm
Is Paging with Recordsets the Best Method?
http://www.15seconds.com/issue/010607.htm
But now in SQL Server 2005, you don’t need to create any temp table etc. to achieve the same result set. Microsoft extent SELECT statement with new ranking function ROW_NUMBER() which return row number in result set itself.
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY OrderID) AS RowNumber, OrderID, OrderDate
FROM Orders
Which will give result some thing like:
RowNumber OrderID OrderDate
-------------------- ----------- -----------------------
1 10248 1996-07-04 00:00:00.000
2 10249 1996-07-05 00:00:00.000
3 10250 1996-07-08 00:00:00.000
4 10251 1996-07-08 00:00:00.000
5 10252 1996-07-09 00:00:00.000
6 10253 1996-07-10 00:00:00.000
7 10254 1996-07-11 00:00:00.000
8 10255 1996-07-12 00:00:00.000
9 10256 1996-07-15 00:00:00.000
10 10257 1996-07-16 00:00:00.000
So now you can utilize this row number of the record to qualify the required records from whole table. How? Here I go
WITH Ordered AS (
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY OrderID) AS RowNumber, OrderID, OrderDate
FROM Orders)
SELECT *
FROM Ordered
WHERE RowNumber between 21 and 30
And result will be something like
RowNumber OrderID OrderDate
-------------------- ----------- -----------------------
21 10268 1996-07-30 00:00:00.000
22 10269 1996-07-31 00:00:00.000
23 10270 1996-08-01 00:00:00.000
24 10271 1996-08-01 00:00:00.000
25 10272 1996-08-02 00:00:00.000
26 10273 1996-08-05 00:00:00.000
27 10274 1996-08-06 00:00:00.000
28 10275 1996-08-07 00:00:00.000
29 10276 1996-08-08 00:00:00.000
30 10277 1996-08-09 00:00:00.000
I know this will going to save lot of afford for me.
It was really handy and useful hot key to inspect the object definition in Query Analyzer (SQL Server 2000). If you have to see object definition without moving into another child window, select any object in query pane and press ALT+F1. Voila!!!
But, it seems like that this short key will be missing in SQL Server 2005. I hope that this is a bug in the beta version and will be addressed in actual release.
I am not sure where should I raise this issue (or bug), but I should have a short key (F12??) in order to inspect object definition.
While installing SQL Server 2005 (Beta 2) in my machine today, every time I was ending up with an error message:
Errors occurred during the installation:
Beta components detected.
Error 50307 installing .Net Framework 2.0
Error message is bit encryptic, providing no idea what’s wrong in my machine. I have spent 2 hours to figure out the cause of this error message. After googling all related issues with installation of SQL Server 2005, I learned that it’s actually a compatibility problem with .NET CLR 1.2.
After uninstalling .NET 1.2 from my machine, SQL Server 2005 installed properly in my machine. Yeah…I know that I have to reinstall v1.2 again for my current projects.
Installation was very straight forward and descriptive (that I always expect from Microsoft) if you exclude above “incompatibility” issue.