Recently I was trying to find duplicate records in a table. The records are considered duplicate if two columns in different records has the same value. For example if first name and last name is same in record1 and record2, they considered as duplicate.

The below query will help to find the duplicate records.

SELECT fname, lname, COUNT(*) AS DuplicateCount FROM [Users]
GROUP BY fname, lname HAVING COUNT(*) > 1
ORDER BY COUNT(*), fname.

(I know this is pretty simple one, but most of the time you struggle for the simplest query :) so thought of sharing it)

String.Replace is not case insensitive, so what is the best way to do it. There are several ways, if I think of the quickest one it is using regex.

          using System.Text.RegularExpressions;stringstring str
= "The quick brown Fox jumps over the lazy dog"; string strReplace
= "cat"; string result = Regex.Replace(str, "fox",
strReplace, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

-Rujith

I had lot of trouble in my last project due the html body onload event. The aspx pages were relying lot on this event ( I agree its not the best way, but we don't have the budget and time for to rebuild the entire site). These sites were AJAXyfied recently using Telerik RadControls, and were not working in FireFox. I must admin Telerik controls are really good, its makes your job very easy in AJAX world. Though I don't like their quarterly release idea. YES, they release a new version every quarter...

So the problem in AJAX is, the page can be loaded asynchronously, so when the onload event on the body is fired the controls may not be ready, so you get null exceptions.

The best way I found is to use the built in ‘pageLoad()’ method(this is a reserved method). This will be called once all AJAX load events are finished. Remember you can use this only in AJAX pages. Also this is consistent in different browsers. (If you are going with FireFox you have to use window.load=function() instead onload=function())

Coding is fun

-Rujith

Maximum request length matters when you want to allow upload/download of large files.

This is one of the major change in IIS7. In previous version the default is 4MB, in IIS7 its 28.6MB. So when you deploy your ASP.NET application you will see that it will work for files larger than 4MB, but will give as soon as you cross the 28MB.

In IIS 7, the attribute has been changed to maxAllowedContentLength and it has to appear in <system.webServer> section (as for all IIS 7 settings). The complete attribute will look something like this…

          <
          system.webServer
          >
          
            

<
          security 
          >
<
          requestFiltering
          >
<
          requestLimits 
          maxAllowedContentLength
          ="3072000000" />
</requestFiltering>
</security>

…

I ran into trouble during deploying a WCF service on IIS7 with https.

There's a great resource on all things WCF Security related here

http://www.codeplex.com/WCFSecurity

This helped me a lot.

When you are working with Active Directory the following may be useful,

Import and export directory objects – CSVDE & LDIFDE
ex: from the command prompt try CSVDE -f C:\Exportfile.csv
more help is available in this KB article.

Another useful utility while working with Active directory and LDAP(Light Weight Directory Access Protocol) is ADSI Edit (adsiedit.msc). Nice link if you want to know in detail.

Also found this interesting link with attributes and its description for AD Users. see here. And check this script to list all User object attributes in active directory schema.

ADO.NET data provider for Oracle is dying. ADO.NET team has decided to kill(deprecate) it in .NET 4.0. How sad isn’t it? Read more about the story on ADO.NET team blog

Though sometimes I feel its unnecessary to have a duplicate copy of Oracle data provider. Most of the people use ODP.NET or some other third party client. Nice comparison here (and that is why people don’t use .NET Oracle client :))

One very bad thing I noticed about these providers is both of them need Oracle client installed. For the MS provider(System.Data.OracleClient) the minimum requirement is Oracle 8i Release 3 (8.1.7) Client or later. Check the requirement in detail here System Requirements (Oracle).
For the ODP.NET Oracle client version 9.2 or later.

Its not always possible to install a large application like Oracle client in some scenario, so there is an alternative without installing the Oracle client, use Oracle Database Instant Client. Just put Oracle Instant Client in the same folder as your executable file.

-Rujith

Nine Options for Managing Persistent User State in Your ASP.NET Application… one of the basic things to learn when you start ASP.NET training… :) I am forgetting simple things…

so the methods are

1. Application
2. Cookies
3. Form Post / Hidden Form Field
4. Query String
5. Session
6. New State Containers in ASP.NET
7. Cache
8. Context
9. ViewState
10. Web.config and Machine.config Files
11. Profile (ASP.NET 2.0) ??

more details are on MSDN

Found this interesting post here…

I am sure all of us (s/w fellows) must have come across so called ‘distributed team’… nice point to note…

-Rujith

See how you can things more complicated… click here…

and how you can make things simpler… here

For my new project I had to create a plan, I guess all the project managers need one… and the best way to represent the plan is in Gantt chart. So that your boss will know when each milestone will be achieved in the timeline.
I searched in the web for free Gantt chart tools and couldn’t find any good ones, and we didn't had budget to buy one.

Then I decided to use the almighty excel to create one. It was very easy to create one, excel support charts, what else you need. Excel is really powerful isn't it..I remember when I used to share accommodation with my friends I used excel spreadsheet to calculate our common expenses, though some of them argue there is mistake in the formula they are paying more :)

So to cut the crap out, the Excel Project Plan Gantt chart is available here for download. In short the features include
1. Gantt chart of the project plan
2. Need only minimal inputs(project start date, tasks and task estimates)
3. The formula takes care of Weekends(NOT holidays) while calculating dates.
3. Fully customizable. you are free to change the formula to suit your purpose. you can even convert it into an excel template Gantt chart if you like.

Rest you can see yourself in the spreadsheet.

Please feel free to leave your comments and suggestions in this blog.

Some of the references I have used are below

1. Using Excel to Create a Gantt Chart by Michele McDonough
http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/3418.aspx

2. and of course office online excel help

-Rujith