Ben March's Technology Blog

My New Digs – BuyFun.com

Ben — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 02:01:26 +0000

I’ve recently started working as a Senior Developer at BuyFun.com. Decided I was ready for a change after 11 years at the same company. I wasn’t really looking to get into another big corporation. Sent out one resume, got back one job offer. Cool cool.

So far working at buyfun.com has been a ton of fun and I feel like I’m being really productive and actually contributing to the advancement of the company instead of just helping keep the lights on.

The coolest part of working here is that I get to get back into coding. I’m looking forward to learning new things and sharing that on my blog again. I love learning and creating. I think I’ve found a company that very much matches my desired culture and I’m doing a job I love – programming.

…anyway, less bloggy-bloggy, more codey-codey.

“New Index…” is greyed out in SSMS

Ben — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:50:31 +0000

Can’t create a new index? In SQL Server Management Studio, if the New Index… option is greyed out, it is because you have a table’s Design window open. Close the design window to be able to create a new index.

Full Text Index with Database Project Problem

Ben — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:40:11 +0000

I was running into issues with scripting full text indexes to my database project when doing a database compare from a SQL Server 2008 R2 database to my Visual Studio 2010. A new index was being created in my project each time I compared. I had the full text indexes working in the database so was unsure why visual studio kept trying to create new indexes in my database project and when I reversed the comparison it tried to drop my existing full text indexes.

This issue was report to Microsoft Connect but they were unable to reproduce and marked the issue as closed.

I traced the issue down to the “key index” value being missing from the full text index which was generated during the database -> database project comparison.

The issue is caused because the index which the full text index was keyed off of was really an extension of my primary key and was automatically named during the primary key creation. I was using the index shown below.

The solution was to create a new index and name it myself. I had to delete my existing full text index and create a new full text index and reference my newly created index. I just deleted my entire catalog and started over since but you may be able to just remove a single index instead of starting over completely. After creating the new index and new full text index to reference it the Visual Studio database comparison correctly brought in the name of the index and subsequent database comparisons worked as expected.

The Microsoft Connect article also lists my workaround now.

SQL Server 2008 R2 Spatial Data Notes

Ben — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:45:58 +0000

Building a Point
A point in SQL Server is represented as Longitude and then Latitude
geography::STPointFromText(‘POINT(‘ + CAST([Longitude] AS VARCHAR(20)) + ‘ ‘ + CAST([Latitude] AS VARCHAR(20)) + ‘)’, 4326)

Ring Orientation
A ring is a collection of points that make up a polygon. A ring either defines an area inside or outside of the polygon. Defining the points of a ring in a counter-clockwise manner means you want to include everything within the ring. Defining the ring in a clockwise pattern means you want to include everything outside the ring.

Hemispheres
You cannot cross hemispheres when defining a polygon. This includes the Northern/Southern hemispheres as well as the hemispheres defined as East/West of the Prime Meridian.

Longitude
Longitude is defined as numbers between -180 and +180

Latitude
Latitude is defined as numbers between -90 and +90

Error generating final archive: Debug certificate expired

Ben — Sun, 22 May 2011 13:27:30 +0000

I’m getting back into android development after being away from it for a while. When trying to build my application (using a 64 bit windows 7 machine) I received an error saying “Error generating final archive: Debug certificate expired on [mm/dd/yy hh:mm AM]“. To fix this in Eclipse I had to go to the “Window menu -> Preferences -> Android -> Build” and then find the location where my Default debug keystore was located which in my case was C:\Users\Ben\.android\debug.keystore. I opened up C:\Users\Ben\.android\ and deleted the debug.keystore file. Back in Eclipse I went to the project menu and selected “Clean…” which gave me the option to clean all projects or just selected projects. After cleaning the trouble project I was able to continue with debugging my application. A new debug.keystore file was created where the old one was.

Do I have SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008 R2 installed?

Ben — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 02:54:36 +0000

How to identify your SQL Server version and edition

SELECT SERVERPROPERTY(‘productversion’), SERVERPROPERTY (‘productlevel’), SERVERPROPERTY (‘edition’)

Version Components and Numbering

SQL Server 2008 R2 is a minor upgrade of SQL Server 2008. This means that it shares the same major version number with SQL Server 2008, and has an increment to the minor version. The product version for SQL Server 2008 R2 is 10.50.bbbb.rr. Compare this with the product version for SQL Server 2008 which is 10.0.bbbb.rr.

SSRS 2008 Security Item Level and System Level Role Definitions

Ben — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 02:36:59 +0000

In SSRS 2008 it appears you can no longer configure item-level role definitions and system-level role definitions like you used to be able to do in SSRS 2005 as shown in this screenshot from SSRS 2005.

This functionality to define roles still exists but you can no longer access it through the Report Manager website. To manage item-level and system-level role definitions you need to use SQL Server Management Studio and use it to connect to SSRS on your server. Once you do that you can create new system-level and item-level role definitions. Once those are created you can go back to report manager and utilize the defintions you created in SSMS.

System-Level Role Defintions…

Item-Level Role Definitions

Remote Desktop to Console

Ben — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 14:08:50 +0000

To RDP directly to a server’s console you can use the following command…

mstsc /v:SERVERNAME /console

MS SQL Server Management Studio Intellisense Refresh

Ben — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 20:56:36 +0000

In MS SQL Server 2008 you will occassionally run into a problem where it appears you have an error in your query because intellisense doesn’t recognize changes that recently occured in your database. You need to refresh the intellisense in order for the recent changes to not appear as errors in your queries. To do this, you can go to Edit -> Intellisense -> Refresh Local Cache or you can type ctrl+shift+R.

3 Free Useful Visual Studio 2010 Add-Ins

Ben — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 03:52:41 +0000

Here are three add-ins for visual studio 2010 that I have found particularly useful

1) Productivity Power Tools

Includes many useful features, but here are a few of my favorites.

Allows you to control+click on an item to navigate to its definition.
Adds Solution Navigator (similar to Solution Explorer) to navigate through files, methods, variables, etc.
HTML Copy – Allows you to copy text from the editor and paste while maintaining the style of the code.
Add column guides by right clicking on any line in the code and using the appropriate context menu.
Move entire lines of code up and down by pressing alt + up arrow/down arrow

2) GhostDoc

Allows you to document classes, methods, variables by right clicking on the item and selecting “Document this”. Base documentation is created for you based off of the name of the method, variables, class, etc. GhostDoc is very handy for creating documentation quickly when you are already naming items descriptively.

3) PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2010

PowerCommands provides some functionality in VS 2010 that is much needed and surprisingly not present in the IDE by default. Here is a short list of my favorites…

Copy and paste project references
Open Command Prompt at directory of items folder
Open Containing Folder
Right Click -> Close ALL from the document tab.