Ransara W in WWW

SQLPLUS retrieving query results into csv or html file

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 05:42:00 +0000

Hi,

Back to blog after few months, as usual.
Sometime before, i wanted to extract some information from a client database. So, with the assumption that the client is dumb, i sent the sql statements with the instructions on how to execute. These queries needed to be run on a Oracle database using SQLplus database client. Although i didn't imagined, the client has executed the sql statements and sent me by copying and pasting to an outlook email, resulting no formatting, no indenting, can't find which value belong to which row, finally, totally unusable results.

Then, i decided to send the SQLplus result formatting instructions as well with the sql statements, bundled in to a sql script.

Below is "how to format SQLplus results" or, "how to retrieve SQLplus query results into a csv or html file".

Below is the runquery.sql script (edited so that the readers won't know any official info).

set term off -- do not display on scree. will be displayed on the log only

set colsep , -- separate columns with a comma

set pagesize 50000 -- get rid of disturbing ---- between pages

set heading on -- Print column heading

set trimspool on -- remove trailing blanks. eliminating the spaces up to eol

set linesize 300 -- line size should be the sum of the column widths

spool query_results.csv

select STU_ID,STU_NAME,STU_GRADE from SCH_TBL_STUDENT;

spool off

exit;

The script can be executed by.

sqlplus user_nm / pass_wd @ db_alias @runquery.sql

As stated in the spool instruction in the above script, the results of the query are written to query_results.csv file. SQLplus generates additinal spaces to match the column width in the output in query_results.csv file.

You could follow up with a sed script to remove whitespaces that appears in the file. Assuming there are no spaces in the values.

sed -e "s/[ ]*//g" query_results.csv > query_results_nosp.csv **NOTE :: There is a space in the square brackets above

Now open this file in excel.

If you need a html output (to open in web browser) instead of a csv file (to open in excel), then add the below line on top of the above srript.

set markup html on spool on head "My Query Result[ less than ] title [ greater than ] My Query Results [ less than ] / title [ greater than ]"

Datz All Folks !!!

Sources :

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/643137/how-do-i-spool-to-a-csv-formatted-file-using-sqlplus

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B10501_01/server.920/a90842/ch13.htm

http://ss64.com/ora/syntax-sqlplus-set.html

5 Interesting Uses of Google Search by Image

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:32:00 +0000

Hi friends,

It’s after a very long time I’m back to my blog (Its after 2009 Jan). If I think about the past, it was a time full of lot of changes and achievements for me (not for the blog anyway). Although its after few years, im writing again, the interests remain unchanged.

In this post, I expect to state some fantastic (might be crazy and asking for what) and interesting ways of using the Google Search by Image (not image search), which is integrated to Google Image Search.
What are the ways that we can use "Google Search by Image" ??? Below are some ways that I used Google Search by Image.

1. Finding Places:

Some time before, I received a set of images of a place via a forwarded email from a friend of mine. The email says that it’s a place in Sri-Lanka. But, since it was a doubt for me, I saved one image to my desktop and uploaded the image to Google Search by Image’s “Upload an image” box.

I was correct! It was not Sri-Lanka. It was a place in some other country, somebody has had some fun by telling other that’s it’s in Sri-Lanka, and some poor fellows were forwarding this false email.

2. Finding People:

This is the most interesting usage I ve ever had with Google Search by Image. Let’s say you have received a friend request to your Facebook. The requester is having a nice, beautiful, charming, etc… although you don’t know the requester, you might feel to add her (sorry, him or her), primarily because of the profile picture. But don’t forget that there are a large number of fake profiles in Facebook. How can you know is the picture real? How to know the person in the picture is the real requester. Answer is simple. Google It!!! Go to the requester’s profile, go to the profile picture (you have access to the profile picture when a request is received), save it to desktop, upload the image to “Upload an image” box, click Search.

Interestingly, I found where the picture was taken (stolen by the fake profile owner). Google search by image showed the url of the web site that the picture is contained. The web site is by a person with a different name, it (the web site) was real and it was used for advertising herself or to attract clients.
A person with nasty desires had stolen the pictures from some web sites and created a fake Facebook profile and placing requests to totally unknown people. Google search by image comes handy in such situations as well.

3. Finding Better Quality Images:

Then, when you are having a low quality or small or low resolution image, you can upload the image to Google Image Search and find a better quality or high resolution one. This comes handy when you capture an image from your mobile when you see some special thing in TV or on road, and need to find a better quality picture or part of the cropped picture by you.

4. Finding Information about Great People / Creatures / Animals:

When you find a picture of some great person who has done some remarkable invention, and if you don’t know the name to Google and find more info, just upload the picture to “Google Search by Image” and get information.
Similarly, it’s possible to use the same for pictures of creatures and plants as well. I don’t know about the level of accuracy when this kind of pictures are analyzed by Google, but, its said that the accuracy is amazing.

5. Finding any Abuse of your Photos:

If you are a photographer or graphic designer, you might publish your designs on Facebook or Picasa albums (with or without a watermark). There is a possibility of other people steal your picture and publishing in their web sites even without acknowledging you. If you suspect your pictures being stolen, then better do an image search for your picture and find out what are the other web sites that the same picture is published.

That’s all for now, I will update this post later if I get to know any more good usages of Google Search by Image. Thanks for your attention on this post.

How to find who is invisible on gmail chat

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:07:00 +0000

hi friends..

having another nice thing to write..

its "how to find who is invisible on gmail chat"

If you need to find your friend is actually offline or is s/he invisible in gmail chat, these are the steps to follow.

1. Log on to google talk

2. Hover the mover over the contact

3. Click the "down arrow" in the appearing box

4. Select "Chat"

5. Click the "down arrow" in the chat window

6. Seletct "Go off the record"

7. Type "Hi" in the chat

If you get a red text showing

“ is offline , can’t receive the message right now ”

then that contact is actually offline.

If you do not get that red messege,

That means the contact is invisible.

Your friend is caught !!!!

Thats all, and that is how to find who is invisible on gmail chat..

Enjoy !!!

how to find who has blocked you in gmail

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:23:00 +0000

Hi friends,

These days i'm super buzy with a dozen of assignments and projects; so didnt had any intersting post for some time. Anyway, last week, i had to block one of my friends on my gmail chat (its just a joke that i did; he hee; friends name starts with D; guess...). So i wanted to find out is there any way for my friend to find out that i have blocked that name in my gmail chat list. Oops yes !! there's a way... And this is "how to find who has blocked you in gmail chat".

For this you have to use a chat client called "pidgin". Click here to visit pidgin website and download pidgin.

After installing it, configure it to use for google chat (need any help ? drop me an email). You can configure pidgin for FaceBook chat also. There's a nice post about it on my friend Sanjaya's blog.

Launch Pidgin.

Enable your gmail account (if its not enabled).

Go To "Buddies" -> "Show" -> tick on "Offline Buddies"

Now you should be able to all your contacts (available, busy, idle, invisible, offline, or any...)

Then select a contact, right click and select "Get Info"

It will give you a brief information about the contact (at least the name)

If that contact has blocked you, then you won't get any information (not even the name) when you select "Get Info" option.

So.. now you can find who has blocked you in gmail chat. Thanks Hayesha for giving me his wireless net connection to use pidgin and for blocking me for few minutes in testing this...

Happy Chatting !!!!

Make Gmail Your Universal Email Account

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 04:38:00 +0000

Have you ever think of connecting all your email accounts to an one single email account ??? Some time before gmail made this happen and in this post i'd like to mention few facts about that.

In this cace you need two bacis things.
1. Sending email from the universal email account, as you are sending from other account.
2. Receiving the emails you receive to all other accounts to your universal email account.

Gmail has made this posible.

Go to Accounts in the gmail settings
use Add Mail Address in "Send mail as:" and "Get mail from other accounts:"
and follow the instructions.

Reading your Windows Live or Hotmail email directly from Gmail:
The above method works fine for pop3 enabled mail servers. but my hotmail and windows live free accounts dont allow me pop3 access. Therefore theres a little trick to be done. Add your hotmail/live to another service which provides you pop3 access and add that to your gamil. One such service is izymail. Create an account there and you will get the incoming mail server as "in.izymail.com" on port "110". Use that in adding your hotmail/live account. I ve attached an screen shot for your convinience.

Gmail Video Chat ( Voice and Video Chat Inside Gmail)

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:03:00 +0000

hi all,

after a long time... bit bz with acedemic + industry stuff.. just got to know about a cool news from my friend Garthee; Google Launches Voice and Video Chat Inside Gmail !!!!!

11 Nov 2008 (yesterday), Google launched video chat inside gmail, which is a cool feature for all the gmail users (actually gmail users who is sitting infront of a web cam with a microphone).

This feature requires to install a plugin to your browser which you can download from here. For more info visit Official Gmail Blog.

From my point of view, with providing rich content on web (with Facebook, Google Apps ie:Gmail, Gtalk, Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites), Google has started and continuing its way to our future dream "The Web will be the OS"....

jst see this video, which i found on YouTube....

Windows Registry - Know it !! it will make your work easier

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:23:00 +0000

Hi all,

First of all i think its good to describe what made me to write this post. In most of the computers in lab at uni, every time i log in to a computer i need to set the connection settings of Internet-Explorer and then import them when launching Firefox and Download Managers. I don't know why the server do not push the settings when i log in; (in some computers the server does that while for some computers i need to manually set them).

Anyway, this is a headache for me and i was thinking of writing a script for that. Coz i ve attended a Linux Shell Scripting workshop few months before ( Thanking a lot to Anuradha Ratnaweera , Bud, Suchetha Wijenayake, Sanjeewa Wijerathne , D. Anuradha, Sapumal and my friend Hayesha for informing me about the event) and in this situation i wanted to write some kind of a thing for windows also.

i found that the Internet Connection Settings are there in the Windows Registry and i can edit them. Therefore i wrote a .reg file to write the proxy settings to the windows registry. WOW !! It Works !!!

just three lines,
if you are using this, copy the code below to a notepad and save in .reg format. replace myProxy and myPort with your institutes proxy and port values.

Cheers !!!

=== === === === === ( proxySettings.reg ) === === === === ====
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
"ProxyEnable"=dword:00000001
"ProxyServer"="myProxyIP:myProxyPort"

Beginner or Expert – it’s the time to use NetBeans 6.1!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:05:00 +0000

Hi folks, it’s again after some time I’m writing a blog post. These days if some one asks me “Hi how’s life?” my first answer is “Life is cool as usual but busy with my final year project stuff…

My project is mainly based on J2ME and I’m a newbie to mobile application development with Java. The first thing that I was seeking was a good IDE for the j2me development, because a good IDE enhances the performance a lot. After surfing the internet, reading experts ideas that they have stated in their blogs, I found the exact match for my requirement. Its NetBeans 6.1!! I just wanted to try it and see coz experts are using it. The rest of this post is based on my search results and experience of last 3weeks.

I knew about NetBeans IDE from my first year but what I had in my mind is it’s only for java. This is the first time I got to know that NetBeans is not only for java. It covers a verity of platforms and languages like C/C++, Java, Ruby, Php, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, JSP, JavaFX, XSL, WSDL, UML, Groovy, Scala, Prolog, Tcl, and many more…even people do OpenGL development (3D graphics modeling) with NetBeans6.1.

From my point of view, Net-beans6.1 is the best IDE that a student can use (irrespective of the programming language as NetBeans supports a variety of programming languages) because students cant spend a lot of money on software. You might use cheap pirated proprietary IDEs, but it’s illegal. Since NetBeans is free you are not violating any others rights (I know the IT experts also agree with me on the above fact).

NetBeans6.1 is a best GUI builder and a Rapid Application Development tool which is rich in features and great in performance. NetBeans supports Windows, UNIX, Linux, Solaris, Mac OSX OS platforms. Visual Designer for MIDP applications is very much useful in my work. When the source code editor is concerned variable highlighting and code completion features are really good and performing very well. In addition to those the NetBeans6.1 IDE is having the following features and many more… (I got the feature information from http://wiki.netbeans.org/NB61NewAndNoteWorthy.)

Faster and improved startup of the IDE and projects (40% faster startup than NB6.0).
Transparent windows when dragging and when slide.
Ability to create different types of projects that share same class libraries.
Associating JARs with projects Javadoc and sources.
Great support for MySQL in the Database Explorer allows developers to register a MySQL Server, view databases, view, create, and delete databases, easily create and open connections to these databases, and many more.
Viewing Java Bean patterns in the Navigator + BeanInfo Editor.
Code editing and code completing enhancements including editing of javadoc comments.
JavaScript support.
JSF CRUD Generator, Spring Framework Support, Axis2 support for web services, SOAP UI integration for Web Service testing and monitoring.

So my dear friends, why are you waiting? Go to http://www.netbeans.org and download new NetBeans6.1 IDE, test it and enjoy it!!!

Looking for a free alternative to Adobe Illustrator & CorelDraw ?

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:49:00 +0000

Hi friendz,

Recently, while i was reading a code project news letter, i came through a note on a free software named "Creative Docs .net" which is really a very good alternative to Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. BTW, dont think that im an expert in designing.... any way im not that much bad in it.

Creative Docs .NET is a free (free for non-commercial use), flexible vector drawing software which runs on windows platform. It supports vector based graphics designing with rich text and ideal to quickly write short documents, manuals, posters, illustrations, schema s, plans, flow charts, and much more.

Though available without charge, Creative Docs offers tons of goodies seen only in commercial software - you can draw text along a curved path, merge shapes using boolean operations, convert text into Bezier curves, color gradients, etc... Creative Docs can also be used for creating optical illusions, drawing flow charts or for writing manuals like you would do inside Microsoft Word. The finished document or graphic can be saved in image formats or as a PDF document.[this paragraph is extracted from here]

Visit http://www.creativedocs.net for more information.
Im attaching some screen captures with this post that i got from their web site.

Happy Creative Docs !!

Be Careful !! when Storing passwords and using Ctrl + C

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 05:56:00 +0000

Hi friends,

A friend of mine sent me an email about an web page that access your clipboard. Although i knew that the programs can access your clipboard it wasn't in my mind that some times im copying my passwords to clipboard.

visit this link http://www.sourcecodesworld.com/special/clipboard.asp then you will get what i stated in the above paragraph.

Finally on that, Do not keep sensitive data (like passwords, credit card numbers, PIN etc.) in the clipboard while surfing the web. It is extremely easy to extract the text stored in the clipboard to steal your sensitive information.

Another thing that i noticed is, that doesn't work for firefox. Hope the firefox lovers are overjoyed to hear that. But have you tried to view the remembered passwords of firefox. Just go to Tools->Options->Security->ShowPasswords. It will show all your stored passwords.

There is nothing called perfectly secured or safe. We have to be careful about our sensitive data coz online frauds are everywhere.

Developing Add-Ins for Visual Studio + VS Add-In That Converts C# Code to VB

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 02:42:00 +0000

This article is bit old but it’s really useful and I thought to have a note on this MSDN magazine article. The link is http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/02/PasteAs/ It describes developing an add-in to Visual Studio which can convert the copied (copied to clipboard) C# code to VB code when pasting it on the code file of VS (similar to Paste_As in MS Office). It uses web-based code converters available for converting the code.

If you need to catch up all the basics of VS (including add-in development for visual studio) this link is really good. Link is http://rapidshare.com/files/74382144/Microsoft_-_Working_With_Microsoft_Visual_Studio_2005.pdf

Wish you all a code filled, debugger free, compiled New Year with lots of IDEs!!!

Get Screenshot - My Program in C#.net - just 7 lines of code

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 06:33:00 +0000

Hi all,

Today around 12noon, while i was thinking of having lunch, a friend of mine asked me that you havent published the code of your screen shot taking program (i stated i coded such program in my first post in Nov 2007). Yes friends, i didnt feel to mention the code there.

Here it is !!
just seven lines of C#.net (2.0) code !!!

int scrWidth = Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Width;
int scrHeight = Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Height;
Bitmap scrShot = new Bitmap(scrWidth, scrHeight);
Graphics gfx = Graphics.FromImage((Image)scrShot);
gfx.CopyFromScreen(0, 0, 0, 0,new Size(scrWidth, scrHeight));
saveFileDialog1.ShowDialog();
scrShot.Save(saveFileDialog1.FileName + ".bmp");

Test it, enjoy and send me your comments....

Cheers!

The History of MS SQL Server

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 09:20:00 +0000

While i was reading "Beginning SQL Server 2005 for Developers by Robin Dewson" (i downloaded it today morning), i felt to do a post on the History Of SQL Server and here it is ....

1988 - SQL Server 1.0
SQL Server started as a joint application built with Sybase for use on OS/2. This was the Microsoft's entry to the database market.

1993 - SQL Server 4.2 for Windows NT
It was a desktop database with low-functionality. It was capable of meeting the data handling and storage needs of a small department. It was a DB which is integrated with Windows and having an easy-to-use interface. This was the first version of SQL Server which was coded for NT.

1994 - Microsoft split from Sybase.

1995 - SQL Server 6.0, codenamed SQL95
This is a significant release of SQL Server; because it’s released as a small business database with improved performance and significant feature enhancements. The core database engine was rewritten. This version SQL Server is capable of handling small e-commerce and intranet applications, and was a fraction of the cost of its competitors.

1996 - SQL Server 6.5, codenamed Hydra
SQL Server was gaining prominence such that Oracle brought out version 7.1 on the NT platform as direct competition.

1998 - SQL Server 7.0, codenamed Sphinx
This version of SQL Server was another significant rewrite to the core database engine and it was a web database. This provided a powerful and feature-rich database that was a truly viable DB server for small to medium businesses, between a true desktop database such as MS Access and the high-end enterprise capabilities of Oracle and DB2. Features like ease of use and providing crucial business tools (e.g., analysis services, data transformation services) were significant to SQL server because those were expensive add-ons in competing databases.

1999 - SQL Server 7.0 OLAP, codenamed Plato

2000 - SQL Server 2000 (Version 8.0) 32-bit version codenamed Shiloh
The performance, scalability and reliability of SQL Server were vastly improved in this version and it became a major player in the enterprise database market with its support for online business operations. The increase in price was really high (but it’s about half the cost of Oracle) and that slowed initial uptake, but the excellent range of management, development, and analysis tools won new customers. At this point Microsoft was able to hit the position of largest player in the Windows database market. According to Gartner Report 5/21/2003, in 2001 Oracle was having 34% of the market while SQL Server was having 40% of the market. In 2002 the gap had grown, with SQL Server at 45% and Oracle slipping to 27%.

2003 - SQL Server 2000 64-bit version, codenamed Liberty

2005 - SQL Server 2005 (version 9.0), codenamed Yukon
In this version of SQL server, many areas have been rewritten. New features like ability to load data via a utility called Integration Services and many advanced features like analysis services, Java Database Connectivity, Notification services, Reporting Services, etc… were included. Among them, the greatest leap forward is the introduction of the .NET Framework to SQL server and allowing the .NET SQL Server specific objects to be built on it. This gave SQL Server the flexible functionality that Oracle has with its inclusion of Java.

Next release - SQL Server 2008, codenamed Katmai (version 10.0)

Reference: Beginning SQL Server 2005 for Developers from Novice to Professional by Robin Dewson

Capturing Screenshots from Windows Media Player

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:51:00 +0000

Hi all,

From a long time i was wondering why i cannot capture screen shots from win media player by using the print-screen-key and paste on MSPaint. Since i'm not willing to pay money to any third party vendors, i coded a program using C#.net to get screen shots. It works well (im glad its very few lines of code) for all the things except for taking screen shots of videos running on media player. I tried using VLC Player which is really an excellent player with great and amazing functionalities (it gets screenshots of videos and saves), but it has poor performance when draging forward and backword the seek bar while playing a video (the video blurs with distorted colours and it stops few seconds after i press the pause button). ah... its enough about the difficulties i faced....

Today i found what i missed in Win Media Player and how to capture screenshots from it.

go to Windows Media Player and click on Options in the Tools menu
go to Performance tab and click Advanced under it
uncheck Use Overlays
Ok and Save the changes. (if a video is running at this time it will be stopped)

Thats all Folks ! Its done !!

i would like to suggest this link and this linkif you are having troubles in projecting Win Media Player

Sorry friends, Its after a long time.....

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:45:00 +0000

Hi friends,
Its after one and half years im writing a post to my blog. During that period i couldnt even see my blog. This is the second post; actually the one after the test post i made when i was creating my blog.

Any way, leave all those things beside and wonna give a new born to my blog!!!

Starting from today, just now !!

Hello

noreply@blogger.com (Ransara) — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 10:54:00 +0000

Welcome you all to my blog

Ransara Wijethunga