There are several reasons that could cause a query or updates to take longer then expected. This could be due to network issues or it could even be due to the database design itself, but most of the time slow running queries are caused due to: Network...

If you’re like me and use Shift + Del to permanently delete files, then Recycle Bin icon is of not much use… If you’d like to remove it from the desktop, open registry (Start -> Run -> regedit ), navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> Software ->...

Almost everybody knows that you can give aliases to columns in a result set and to tables/views in a query. But did you know that you can also assign aliases to tables (including temporary tables), views, stored procedures (both, CLR and T-SQL), extended...

Performance profiling? -- Yes. You get the traditional profile info like number of calls, time spent in a method, average execution time. But you can also compare any two performance snapshots of the same application, viewing the difference in the number...

Want to learn more on what’s new in Windows Vista, how to best leverage the new functionality and the new ways to do things? Below are some sites that I found to be quite useful: Windows Online Help (WOH): http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows...

Another possible (but unconfirmed) bug in SQL 2005 Reporting Services: If you have a SSRS report parameter that is multi-value and of one of the label s in the “available values” list exceeds 25 characters , the dropdown list with values for this...

Want to know what’s going on during your computer boot time, i.e. which device drivers are being loaded, the results of the disk check, etc.? Just add /SOS switch to proper line in boot.ini . The boot.ini file is hidden, so you want see it in Windows...

I was not able to find out, yet, directly from the SQL Server product group whether this is a known bug or that it’s even confirmed to be a bug, but here is what I came across last week… On SQL 2005 SP1 (other versions not tested), if you set the...

It is a good idea to occasionally audit your SQL servers for users/groups that no longer exist in the Windows domain, but still exist on the SQL Server. This can happen, for example, when employees or contractors leave the company, or change their login...

For of those of you who like to revisit certain topics at times, and for those of you who started reading this blog recently, below are the links for posts 1 through 199: Welcome to the "AppDev: Something You Should Know" blog SYSK (Something You...

Did you know that pressing Windows key + L will do the same as Ctrl + Alt + Del followed by K; namely lock your computer? Much faster!

Did you know that CodePlex is a new developer oriented web site containing source code for projects like “Ascend.NET” Windows forms controls ( http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=ASCENDNET ), “Atlas” control toolkit ( http://www.codeplex...

If you have a windows service project as part of your solution, you’re quite familiar with the issues it presents -- if the service is running and you’re recompiling either the service project itself, or any assemblies loaded by the service, you’ll get...

For example, is doing something like the code snippet below (done for readability) falls into the "bad practices" category? string x = "<root>" + " <items>" + " <item>" + " <name>xyz</name>" " </item>...

In SQL Server 2000 and 2005 when you create or rebuild an index you can set SORT_IN_TEMPDB option to ON to use TempDB to store the intermediate sort results, which may reduce the time needed to create an index when TempDB is on a set of disks different...

Your browser knows that http://www.microsoft.com is running IIS 6.0/.NET 2.0 as the web server http://www.google.com ‘s web server is GWS 2.1 http://www.eweek.com is running on IIS 5.0 http://www.shopping.com uses Apache 1.3.33 http://en...

Did you know that HTTP defines eight methods (a.k.a. "verbs") indicating the desired action to be performed on the identified resource? They are: HEAD Asks for the response identical to the one that would correspond to a GET request, but without...

The P3P specification (see yesterday’s blog post) requires websites to put their privacy policies in an XML format that can be read by modern browsers such as IE6 and NS7. Users can then easily view the web site’s privacy policy – check out for yourself...

The W3C's Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) provides a standard way for web sites to communicate about their privacy practices (see http://www.w3.org/P3P/ for more details). More and more companies like Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Yahoo, CNet, DoubleClick...

What’s the fastest way to hide from the passing-by co-worker (or your boss) what you’re doing on the computer? Let’s not get into discussion of why you might need that J You could simply minimize the application… But mouse-based navigation is too slow...