Cool video clip from the Channel9 team showing the MS SQL Server "HP Superdome". Something like a terabyte of RAM, 2500 hard drives, etc.

Euan Garden - Tour of SQL Server Team (Part III)

Posted 9:39 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

How to configure wireless bridge device for things like XBox, when you have WEP encryption turned on, need MAC address, etc.

Basically, temporarily plug the device into your PC, and use the software provided (sometimes just a browser) to hit the device and configure it. Once configured, unplug it, and take it to the xbox.

Google Groups : microsoft.public.xbox.halo

Posted 5:22 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Pretty simple, yet addicting game. Throw paper balls into the trash can, accounting for wind direction.

:::: Throw Paper ::::

Posted 8:23 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Another HD info site - this one with a pretty good programming grid. Doesn't show in order of channels, but shows which programs are in HD and which are not.

CheckHD.com - Check Programming

keywords: HD high def hidef progrmming channel lineup

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Another TV Listings site that's got good HD info. Unfortunately, takes a lot of work to customize channel lineup to delete unwanted channels, etc.

TitanTV.com

Posted 9:36 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Spent WAY too much time today figuring out why my BCP import was putting spaces in my varchar columns. Still not sure I have it completely figured out, but sounds like it's by design.

The ANSI_PADDING setting is honored when a table is **created**, and will dictate what happens when data is inserted into varchar columns. Seems odd that this setting is saved from when the table is created, not when the data is being inserted.

I ended up having to do a brute force method. After BCP import, I go through the columns, and rtrim them. Have to watch out for a column that had no data, so rtrim leaves a single space?

Something like this:

osql -E -d Sales -Q "update orderdetail set PONum = rtrim(PONum)"

osql -E -d Sales -Q "update orderdetail set PONum = '' where PONum = char(0)"

Google Groups : microsoft.public.sqlserver.server

Posted 3:33 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Have seen this occasionally on my work machine, and now on the Build box at work.

Slow or Delayed Screen Updates After Reconnecting to Console Session

keywords: slow delayed response reconnect remote desktop

Posted 12:44 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Ran into this today at work. Building up a string that is the SQL statement to pass to openquery. Since the sql statement is calling a stored proc, and has params in it, it needs quotes itself to surround string based params.

When calling the SP directly on the server, it works fine. When called through OPENQUERY, it fails. Turns out when using OpenQuery, SQL makes an extra call of "SET FMTONLY ON" to get metadata info about the resultset. This FMTONLY setting blows up the execution of the sql statement.

Workaround: use 4-part name to call the SP, not through OpenQuery. Issue: have to turn on "RPC OUT" on the linked server setup to get the remote exec SP to work.

PRB: T-SQL Function OpenQuery Fails to Execute on Linked Servers


Posted 10:47 AM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink   

Just some info on quoted identifiers and concatenating strings in SQL.

HOW TO: Pass a Variable to a Linked Server Query

Posted 4:34 PM    |    0 comments    |    Permalink