IRohitable

SQL Server: Get week start and end dates of any month

rpk_2006@yahoo.com — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 13:38:00 +0500

Get week start dates of any month

DECLARE @startDate DATETIME
SET @StartDate = '20130101'
;WITH DayCounter(n) AS
( SELECT 0 UNION ALL SELECT n+1 FROM DayCounter WHERE n<30)
SELECT DISTINCT DateAdd(dd,7-(DATEPART(DW,@StartDate+n)-1),@StartDate+n) FROM DayCounter
WHERE MONTH(DateAdd(dd,7-(DATEPART(DW,@StartDate+n)-1),@StartDate+n)) = MONTH(@StartDate)

Get week end dates of any month

DECLARE @StartDate DATETIME
SET @StartDate = '20130101'
;WITH DayCounter(n) AS
( SELECT 0 UNION ALL SELECT n+1 FROM DayCounter WHERE n<30)
SELECT DISTINCT DateAdd(dd,7-(DATEPART(DW,@StartDate+n)),@StartDate+n) FROM DayCounter
WHERE MONTH(DateAdd(dd,7-(DATEPART(DW,@StartDate+n)-1),@StartDate+n)) = MONTH(@StartDate)

Ruby Notes - 2

rpk_2006@yahoo.com — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 21:35:00 +0500

In this post of the Ruby Notes series:

Some unique control structures in Ruby

Ruby tries to make code more concise and readable where ever possible. Some new controls structures like unless , until and each make code less verbose and more understandable.

if not vs. unless:

Take for instance this example where we use age old If to check for negation:

class Person
     attr_accessor :age


     def age
       @age
     end


     def age=(num)
        @age = num

        if not @age > 18
            puts 'Person not eligible for driving'
        end
     end

end

Now the same example using Unless. Not only unless makes the negation easy to understand but also makes it more concise.

class Person 
    attr_accessor :age


    def age 
      @age 
    end


    def age=(num) 
       @age = num 

       unless @age > 18 
          puts 'Person not eligible for driving' 
       end 
    end 

end

With unless, the body of the statement is executed only if the condition is false. Not only the latter version is one token shorter than if not, it takes less mental energy to understand once you get used to it.

while vs. until:

In exactly the same way that if has unless, while has a substitute as until. An until loop keeps going until its conditional part becomes true.

i = 0 
while i <= 10 
  i += 1 
end 

puts i

i = 0 
until i == 10 
  i += 1 
end 

puts i

for vs. each

customers = ['John','Alex','Peter']

for name in customers 
   puts name 
end

customers = ['John','Alex','Peter']

customers.each do |name| 
   puts name 
end

Why use each over for? Because, for internally calls each so why complicate things and not use each directly.

Previous post of Ruby Notes Series: Ruby Notes - 1

Ruby Notes : 1

rpk_2006@yahoo.com — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 18:17:00 +0500

This is the first post of Ruby Notes series. This series and the later, Rails Notes, is a collection of my personal learning notes prepared while learning Ruby and Rails. These notes are the extract of the several books I referred while learning Ruby. These notes were lying on my shelf from quite some time when one bright sunny day I realised to publish them in the hope to help large number of beginners and enthusiasts needing quick reference to relevant topics only.

In this post:

The Ruby style of Coding.
Proper use of Comments.
When to use Parentheses and when to ignore?
How much code in one line? Single-line or multi-line.

THE RUBY STYLE OF CODING

The Ruby style of coding is built on few simple ideas like:

The code should be clear and itself tell the reader what exactly it is trying to do.
The code should be concise.

To adapt these simple ideas into practice, Ruby stresses on Convention over Configuration from the very start. In Ruby, you indent your code with two spaces per level. The rule is not to use Tabs for indentation.

The Ruby naming convention in short says: Camels for Classes, Snakes everywhere.

This means the Class names should use Camel casing while the rest of the things like methods, arguments and variables should use lower case. For example:

class Customer   
   attr_accessor  :name,  :address,  :place

 
   def initialize(name, address, place)
       @name = name
       @address = address
       @place = place
   end


   def name_length
       puts name.size
   end
end

For constants there is a mixed belief. However, the Ruby community recommends all uppercase with words separated by underscore. For example:

ANNUAL_DISCOUNT = 20

PROPER USE OF COMMENTS

Ruby's philosophy says: "Good code speaks for itself". Therefore, use comments only when necessary not just everywhere.

(1) Keep background information separate from instructions:

# Author: 
# Copyright 2012:
#
# An example of Ruby class

(2) Not every line requires comment:

number += 1  # Add one to number

(3) An example of proper use of comment:

return 0 if divisor == 0  # Avoid division by zero

WHEN TO USE PARENTHESES AND WHEN TO IGNORE?

There is no rigid rule but this is what the Ruby community prefers:

(1) Use Parentheses with the arguments. For example:

def increment_number (number)
   number += 1
   puts number
end

(2) Ignore Parentheses in this type of situation:

def name_length()
   puts name.size
end

Use instead

def name_length
   puts name.size
end

HOW MUCH CODE IN ONE LINE? SINGLE-LINE OR MULTI-LINE?

Preferably one code statement per line is recommended for good readability. However, in certain situations you can fold cold block into one if it doesn't compromise readability. Note how this code can be written with folded block of code without compromising readability:

Style 1:

5.times do |num|
  puts "The number is #{num}"
end

Style 2:

5.times { |num|  puts "The number is #{num}"  }

Technorati : Ruby, Ruby on Rails
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Exploring the new Visual Studio Express 2012 RC for Web

rpk_2006@yahoo.com — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 00:06:00 +0500

Visual Studio 2012 RC packs many new improvements from the Setup to the looks and the underlying core features. The new Setup is said to be 20% faster based on the customization you choose.

Lot of work has been done on the overall UX to give even more friendlier experience. Let's start exploring the new IDE to see few areas where we frequently spend time:

The New Project screen. An empty ASP.NET Web Application now really means empty. You won't get basic start-up code for your application.

An Empty Web Application comes with no default Web Page but only Web.Config file. If you want few lines of start-up code, you can always choose a Basic Template:

The Solution Explorer is one such area where tweaks have been done to make it light and clutter free. Things that don't directly affect the Solution View or the Project Hierarchy have been removed from the Solution Explorer. Enhanced Search has been added to search for any text or item in the Solution Explorer.

The Solution Explorer also contains Active Sync option to easily navigate to the location of the opened document. Click on file in the Solution Explorer and select the Preview option on top of the Solution Explorer. It opens the code of the file for you to preview. Once the Preview icon is selected and marked, you can just keep clicking other files in the Solution Explorer to instantly look the code of the file.

Now lets take a look at the default page of a basic Web Froms Application. You will notice a fresh new template to start with:

Now open the Mark-Up, i.e., the source of Default.aspx. You will notice improvements in code manageability and readability. Just click on any line of the source to notice a gray border around that line:

The new HTML editor offers full support for HTML5 elements and snippets. The CSS editor offers full support for CSS3, including support for CSS hacks and snippets for vendor-specific extensions to CSS.

Technorati : Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2012
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Enhancements in SQL Server 2012 Management Studio

rpk_2006@yahoo.com — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 12:43:00 +0500

SQL Server 2012 brings some of the most desired enhancements in the Management Studio to simplify manageability.

(1) The new SQL Server Management Studio is built on Visual Studio 2012. As it opens, you soon recognize the familiar dark blue theme of Visual Studio 2010.

(2) You can drag and move out Query Window from the main work area:

It also has dual monitor support. You can move out a Query Window to another monitor or outside the main IDE.

(3) You can even drag out the ToolBox from the main IDE and place it elsewhere on the desktop or on another monitor.

(4) Being based on Visual Studio, SSMS brings the same Clipboard Buffer feature of Visual Studio 2010. You can cycle through buffer text by holding down the SHIFT key and pressing CTRL+V.

(5) Another interesting feature is Insert Snippet which you can find on menu via Edit -> IntelliSense. It allows you to inject variety of code snippets onto your Query Window:

Above I selected Create Procedure Basic Template to inject stored procedure code. It even provides you with two parameters to start with. You can always remove or add parameters according to your need.

Similarly, you can inject many other type of code snippets like: Function, Index, Table, View etc. There are even more enhancements which are outside the scope of this post.

Technorati : SQL Server, SQL Server 2012, SSMS
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How to suppress zero values in SSRS report?

rpk_2006@yahoo.com — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 12:54:00 +0500

If you are coming from Crystal Reports background then you must be aware of a property called Suppress if 0 in Crystal Reports. By default, this property is disabled resulting in zero values being displayed on your report. When checked, all the zero values are suppressed by replacing 0 with a blank space.

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is quite young when compared to Crystal Reports. It is not as powerful as Crystal Reports but it definitely bundles simplicity and seamless integration with SQL Server data and Visual Studio.

Here I show you how to implement Suppress if 0 functionality in SSRS. In my example I have used SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services. Before starting let's see how the report looks when opened in browser before suppressing zero values:

To suppress zero values, go to Business Intelligence Development Studio and open the report design. My report design looks like this:

You could see the numeric fields shown as <<Expr>> in the above image. As this version of SSRS does not include any built-in property to suppress zero, therefore you need to make use of built-in functions like IIF.

To do this:

(1) Right-click on any Expression field on your report and select Expression as shown below:

A dialog box opens with the expression shown as below:

(2) Modify the shown expression as shown below. We will make use of a built-in function IIF, which you can find in the Category List of the same dialog. This is also shown in the image below:

It is as simple as that. Now either see the report preview or deploy the report to the Report Server and open the report on the browser. My resulting report is as below:

Del.icio.us : SQL Server, SQL Server Reporting Services, SSRS
Technorati : SQL Server, SQL Server Reporting Services, SSRS

Tool Pick #7: T4 Template Tools

rpk_2006@yahoo.com — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 22:45:00 +0500

tangible T4 Editior: Quickly write your own .NET Code Generator via T4 Text-Templates (.tt-Files) with Intelli-Sense & Syntax-Highlighting. tangible T4 Editor comes with UML-Style modeling tools and can generate from diagrams, database schemas, xml, word, excel sources, or any other data source.

T4 Toolbox: A set of ready-to-use code generators and T4 extensions for Visual Studio. Quickly build powerful C# or VB templates that generate multiple output files or simply use existing templates for LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework and more.

Devart T4 Editor: A powerful Visual Studio add-in for editing T4 templates with syntax highlighting, intellisense, code outlining, and all features of a first-class text editor add-in for Visual Studio. It provides very high performance and makes creating T4 templates easier and faster. As well as ensuring extremely high level of performance, it also speeds up and facilitates the creation of T4 templates.

Life blog branched out

rpk_2006@yahoo.com — Tue, 29 May 2012 01:47:00 +0500

My blog IRohitable has a new sub-branch now: life.irohitable.com.

Note the new category on top with the title My Days My Life.

Learning Ruby and Rails can be fun

rpk_2006@yahoo.com — Mon, 07 May 2012 03:37:00 +0500

While starting Ruby and Rails, I read a couple of tutorials but soon lost interest until I met a monk. Yes, you read it right, a Monk, and this monk guided me to the path of enlightment. My journey to the world of Ruby on Rails started from here:

RubyMonk

The rubymonk Primer is a free introductory course on Ruby. It is an interactive learning platform from C42 Engineering. Learn Ruby with LESSONS, solve PROBLEMS or view the CONTENTS. RubyMonk combines the advantages of learning from a book, pairing with a mentor and actual hands-on coding and delivers it on a fun interactive platform for amateurs and enthusiasts who are discovering the Ruby language.

courtesy: www.rubymonk.com

In the journey, I met a man with code ...

Man With Code

A series of free video tutorials on Ruby. I appreciate the efforts of this man (Tyler J Church) for hosting the videos and will be donating to keep the site running. I request you to do the same.

Watching screencasts alone can't help, until you try it simultaneously:

TryRuby :

Try Ruby is a interactive shell that teaches the Ruby programming language. Originally _why's idea, it has been recreated from the ground up by Rubyists who have a passion for Ruby.

Prefer journey by train (Rails) over road.

Pick this one to understand Ruby internals:

Pick any of these books for your journey on Rails:

I love the Head First and Dummies style of learning. Not only the language is full of humour, the series is equipped with funny pictures and workbook. There is a famous quote: "A picture is worth a thousand words".

Other camps for more learning:

Technorati : Ruby on Rails

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Tool Pick #6: SQL Server Tools

rpk_2006@yahoo.com — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 22:49:00 +0500

This week I have SQL Server tools for you.

SQL Scripter: Powerful tool for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0/2000/2005/2008 database administrators and developers to generate data scripts in a readable and executable T-SQL format.

NetWrix SQL Server Change Reporter: Monitor and review administrative changes on SQL servers and at database levels. Detect early all unauthorized and unwanted changes that can lead to server and database downtime. The Freeware Edition has few limitations.

SQL Sentry Plan Explorer: A FREE tool that builds upon the graphical plan view in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to make query plan analysis more efficient. It is a lightweight standalone app that contains many of the plan analysis features introduced in SQL Sentry v6. It does not require a collector service or database.

FlySpeed SQL Query: Free SQL query tool for any database. It facilitates the process of building SQL by letting you quickly drag and drop tables to create queries, from simple to complex, and combine visual query building with direct SQL text editing.