Hello World for HootSuite

A test blog post to check if HootSuite tweets it correctly

Changing Email settings used by Team Foundation Server

If you need to change the SMTP server or the from address used by TFS:

Edit the following 2 settings in the web.config file found in the following folder: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\Web Services\Services”

<add key="emailNotificationFromAddress" value="fromaddress" />
<add key="smtpServer" value="SMTP SERVER" />

Body Mass Index Calculator from the City and County of Denver

http://www.denvergov.org/EmployeeResources/Wellness/ProgramsandServices/tabid/432532/Default.aspx

GeoEye RoadTracker 2.0 released For Feature Analyst

I was involved with the development of the very first version of RoadTracker from GeoEye for FeatureAnalyst (I provided the GeoEye engineers assistance in developing their plugin for FeatureAnalyst).

This month – they released version 2.0 of their awesome plugin. I am sure they have added some great new features – unfortunately I dont have a license to ArcGIS to be able to take it for a spin.

According to the press-release:
The upgraded application, functional on any road surface type using either panchromatic or multi-spectral imagery, accelerates the collection of roads and other linear features from satellite or aerial imagery by up to a factor of four. This tool also includes automatic feature attribution and other smart editing capabilities that greatly improve speed, accuracy and workflow when collecting map-quality linear features.

www.featureAnalyst.com

Here is a video I created using the first version of RoadTracker: www.youtube.com/watch?v=86TVj88BaLE

Sushi Etiquette

One of my favorite foods. Here is some useful info: via SwissMiss

Database naming standards

Via NixonCorp Team Blog: http://jerrytech.blogspot.com/2010/01/our-database-naming-conventions.html

Prefixes (all prefixes are lower case):

Example	Standard	What is it?
tb_Users	tb_ prefix	Table
UserName	Pascal Case	Column
up_User_Insert	up_ prefix	Stored Procedure
v_Users	v_ prefix	View
fn_UpdateUsers	fn_ prefix	User Function
syn_Users	syn_ prefix	SQL Synonym
idx_Users_001	idx_ prefix	Index
@userName	@ + Camel Case	func, proc Parameter
@UserName	@ + Pascal Case	Local variable

1. Tables are always plural (tb_Users, never tb_User)
2. Columns are in Pascal Case (UserId, FirstName)
3. Primary Keys are single columns whenever possible
4. Primary Keys are named after the table (UserId)
5. Primary Keys end with Id (UserId, not Key or Pk)
6. Foreign Keys end with Fk (UserFk, never Id, Key or Pk)
7. Stored Procedures never use the sp_ because this is a known SQL Server performance problem
8. Stored Procedures are named up_NOUN_VERB such as up_User_Insert or up_User_Search or up_User_Delete, not up_Delete_User or up_DeleteUser or up_UserDelete.
9. Triggers are named tr_TABLE_ACTION such as tb_Users_UpdateSecurity, not tb_UpdateUserSecurity
10. Index names don’t really matter. But if we want to conform them we use idx_TABLE_TYPE_COLUMNS like idx_Users_Clustered_LastNameFirstName. If the number of columns is too long, then idx_Users_Clustered_001

There are special rules especially for cross reference tables.

1. Names should include the parent table’s name
2. Names should include the static term “cross”
3. Names should include the child table’s name
4. They always have a primary key called CrossId
5. Many to One = tb_Groups_cross_User (in all reality, this should never happen – use One to Many).
6. One to One = tb_User_cross_Group (singular child)
7. One to Many = tb_User_cross_Groups (plural child)
8. Many to Many = tb_Users_cross_Groups (all plural)

More Info:
Read my previous post Coding standard – naming of UI elements

Tips and Tricks: 10 Tests of a Web Service Login

Useful information on testing webservices from the SoapUI creators. http://www.soapui.org/userguide/scenarios/loginhacking.html

ASP.Net – Page URL from Request

Here is how you can get the page url after stripping out the QueryParameters from the URL.

UriBuilder builder = new UriBuilder(Request.Url); 
builder.Query = ""; 
string urlWithOutQueryParams = builder.ToString();

Other points:
Server.MapPath – is used to convert a virtual path to a physical path. (The virtual path can have the “~” or be relative “..” or “/”)

VirtualPathUtility class has many useful helper methods that can be used to manipulate the path. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.virtualpathutility_methods.aspx)

Page.ResolveUrl and Control.ResolveUrl can be used within the context of a page to convert a relative path to a URL. (paths that start with “~”, ”..” , ”/”).

Paths starting with a “~” are known as root relative paths or virtual paths. Paths starting with a “..” or a “/” are known as logical paths and are relative to the web-server’s root.

More info:
Making sense of ASP.Net Paths: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/132081.aspx

5 rules for better presentations

Office Powerpoint 2010 "Five Rules" sample presentation from Long Zheng on Vimeo.

Enabling Windows 7 God-Mode

Win 7 God-Mode – provides you with easy access to some useful features in Win 7. To enable it create a folder on you desktop and name it GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Thats it – if you browse into the folder – you will find all the links (shown below).