Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

I was recently looking for a quick way to export SQL Server table data (over 1,00,000 records) to a Excel file. I found that the bcp command line tool can export SQL Server table data to a .xls file but when I export it to a Excel 2007 (.xlsx) file, I couldn't open the file. It throws a warning - "Excel cannot open the file because the file format or extension is not valid. Verify that the file has not been corrupted and that the file extension matches the format of the file". The fix to this issue reported in ASP.NET Forums which points to a MS KB article , is complicated. I wondered, if bcp can export to a .xls file why can't it smoothly export to a .xlsx file? Curiously, I was able to able to export over 7 lakh records to a .xls file (which is supposed to have a row limit of ~65K rows in 22seconds) with bcp and the .xls file opens fine in Excel 2007 displaying all the 7 lakh records. Vinod helped me understand how the process actually works - Fundamentally, you n...

A number of online tools & services have emerged for travelers in India in the last couple of years that help you plan & complete reservations, faster than ever. What is the fastest and/or cheapest way to travel between two places in India? Try 90di.com's online travel search engine . It gets you possible routes by bus, train, flight or train & flight. The best part is (in most cases) you get to view the fare & duration in the search results that are delivered amazingly fast. You can choose to sort on the results by Departure time, Arrival time, Duration, Transits, Fare. The search results contain links to book tickets online through a service provider's website. You can also send your travel search queries in subject field of email to the emailID 90di.com@gmail.com and you will get your search result in your inbox within minutes. For instance, to check availability of Second Class AC reservation on Coromandal Express (Train # 2841) on 25/Aug/2009, type ...

I knew that there were free screencasting tools available, but I did not know about the Microsoft Office Labs Community Clips until I read about it on Channel 10 . Community Clips provides a little app that on installing integrates into Office applications. It lets you record a clip or a tutorial in Office and then share it with others online on SoapBox. As the SoapBox service will terminate soon, uploading the WMV file of the screencast is currently disabled. I hope they bring out a new avatar of SoapBox that uses Silverlight instead of Flash to run the videos while also supporting subtitles . Update(22-Aug-09): Community Clips works not just for Office applications but also any application that is currently open. Once Community Clips is invoked, it sits in the system tray. It can be managed with these hot keys - To start recording: Windows key + Alt + R To stop recording: Windows key + Alt + T To pause recording: Windows key + Alt + P This screencasting tool can also be put to good...

It's good to see browsers picking the good features of each other & in some cases refining them so that it becomes a standard in subsequent versions of other browsers. Tabbed browsing, In-line Search, "Find As You Type", Undo Close Window (Ctrl+Shift+T), built-in Developer Tools are all innovative features started by one browser brand & supported by the rest. An interesting new feature that has come up in Firefox, Safari & Chrome that I'm really finding useful is Spell-Check. Every time there is a typo or a spelling mistake in a text area within a web page that you are typing into, the red squiggles show up when you commit a spelling mistake & you can pick up the correct spelling from the context menu. Safari 4 also introduces Grammar Check, although it's not as refined as we see in MS Word. I hope Spelling & Grammar Check go on to become a standard browser feature. Also see: Keyboard shortcuts common to Firefox & IE 8 The Collective Decis...

If you work with Microsoft technologies, there have been a lot of new developments that you may have to keep pace with to stay current. Microsoft India is conducting free online sessions (nearly 50 in all) from August 19 to 21st on the following topics: Web Development Windows 7 and Client Development Microsoft’s Cloud (Azure) Platform SQL Server Windows 7 The Virtual TechDays sessions will be delivered by experts through live streaming. Register to take part .

SQL Server Magazine has compiled The Mega Guide to Free SQL Server Tools that has over 80 tools for under these categories - Administration Backup and Recovery Best Practice and Compliance Business Intelligence Change Management Code Formatters Database Comparison Database Security Development Job Management Log Management Performance and Monitoring Prevent SQL Server Injection Attacks Web Administration Check them out.... I'll list my favorites among them here after I try them out. Also see: Free SQL Server 2008 Learning Resources Free SQL Server Videos Database Schema Samples

On a technical Forum that I frequent, there was a question on how to get the Label tag's text associated with a radio button (or for that matter any other control). The easiest way I found is to use jQuery - alert($("label[for='radio1']").text()); //radio1 is the ID of a radio button You would need to throw in a reference to the jQuery library when you run that statement. The better way is to link to the online copy here - http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js Is the label tag important anyway? I didn't think so until I read this in W3Schools - The label element does not render as anything special for the user. However, it provides a usability improvement for mouse users, because if the user clicks on the text within the label element, it toggles the control. The for attribute of the label tag should be equal to the id attribute of the related element to bind them together. Did you know an ASP.NET radiobutton control renders as an INPUT tag with t...

The July edition of MSDN mag has an interesting article by Dino Esposito that compares Web Forms And ASP.NET MVC . The author presents an excellent 100 feet view of ASP.NET MVC and I loved reading it. As I'm going to re-read it & recommend it to others, I've made a Reader's Digest version of it that squeezes the 3500+ worded article to about 500 words - Benefits of ASP.NET Web Forms ..stable and mature, supported by heaps of third party controls and tools. To simulate stateful programming over the Web, ASP.NET Web Forms introduced features such as viewstate, postbacks, and an overall event-driven paradigm. ..componentization of some ASP best practices Productivity and rapid development of data-driven, line-of-business applications Drawbacks of Web Forms ..separation of concerns (SoC) has not been a natural fit with the Web Forms paradigm. Automated testing of an ASP.NET Web Forms application is hard ..postback model .. makes it harder for search engines to ra...

I came across the multi-select attachments in GMail feature by accident but later found that this has been documented or rather blogcumented. You have to hold down the Ctrl key and click on each file you want to attach to your message. However, there is a twist. This feature works in all browsers (IE, Safari, Chrome, Opera) except Firefox, the browser I normally use with GMail. In Firefox it shows the File Upload control while in other browsers, it displays the Open dialog box to choose files. No wonder I've been missing that feature all these days. Related posts: HOW TO easily verify your website design in different browsers/OSs HOW TO test a web page in different versions of IE HOW TO make web pages "cross browser"

In a mailing list that I'm part of, there was a question on why installing a new OS on a Mobile is difficult. MVP Saurav 's response was interesting and I quote him (with permission) - Mobile Phone ecosystem is not like a PC. On a PC a user can upgrade the hardware as he wants. If he wants a higher megapixel webcam he can simply buy one & install it. However, this isn't possible on a regular mobile phone. A Mobile phone OS isn't like a PC OS. The reason Apple is able to give free upgrade to iPhone 3G is because they control the iPhone ecosystem. They make the hardware so they know the hardware won't change & it is just one hardware configuration. On the other hand, there are many Windows Mobile phone manufacturers with different configuration due to which Microsoft cannot make a "One size Fits all" OS upgrade. This is the reason, its upto the Device manufacturer to provide OS upgrade & not Microsoft.