Most seasoned sql server programmers know this already, but for you beginners…. When you create a stored procedure with a ‘string’ type of parameter (char, nchar, varchar, nvarchar), it is critically important that you specify the maximum size for this string. When you have a string type of parameter and do NOT specify the size, sql server will default to 1 character. I really wish the T-SQL parser would error when trying to use a string type without specifying the size.

Wow, it is an interesting day today, first we had Google: Has Google Been Hacked? Every search result shows This site may harm your computer. Now if you visit the http://ma.gnolia.com/ site you are greeted with this message Dear Ma.gnolia Community Members or Visitor, Early on the West-coast morning of Friday, January 30th, Ma.gnolia experienced every web service’s worst nightmare: data corruption and loss. For Ma.gnolia, this means that the service is offline and members’ bookmarks are unavailable, both through the website itself and the API.

What is going on with Google today? Every search I do has This site may harm your computer. See the image below And how ironic is this? Google itself shows up as malware LOL Google seemed to have fixed this problem, Took about an hour or so…..wonder if they lost any money during this time Here is what happened according to the Official Google Blog What happened? Very simply, human error.

Here we are with another juicy episode of the SQL Friday, The Best SQL Server Links Of The Past Week show Here is what I found interesting this past week in SQL Land: Denormalizing to enforce business rules: Running Totals Calculating running totals is notoriously slow, whether you do it with a cursor or with a triangular join. It is very tempting to denormalize, to store running totals in a column, especially if you select it frequently.

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Release Candidate has been made available for download, you can get the download here http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=141184&clcid=0x409 You can grab the release notes here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=137661&clcid=0x409 ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Release Candidate is the last public release of ASP.NET MVC that Microsoft will ship prior to the final ‘1.0’ release. Microsoft expects to ship the final ASP.NET MVC 1.0 release next month. Of course I can tell you all the things that are new and wonderful but Scott Guthrie will do a much better job, you can read his announcement here: http://weblogs.

There is a cool way to launch the Malicious Software Removal Tool by Microsoft. I was listening to the Security Now 180: Listener Feedback 58 podcast and Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson described a cool way to launch the Malicious Software Removal Tool Here are both ways 1) Click on Start–>Run enter MRT and hit enter 2) Right click anywhere on the desktop, then select New–>Shortcut, type MRT into the edit field, and hit Next and then Finish.

I use C# to test my VB.Net assemblies. So today I got this little errormessage when doing this. Here is the VB.Net method. vbnet ''' <summary> Public Sub SetFiberGroup(ByRef FiberGroup As FiberGroup) _FiberGroup = FiberGroup End Sub I don’t use ByRef all that often but this time it was needed. And normally you would call this like this in VB.Net. vbnet dim _FiberGroup as new FiberGroup _obj.SetFiberGroup(_FiberGroup) Or something like that.

sp_refreshview or how to make sure that the view will have the underlying table changes Got a question about this on our Microsoft SQL Server Programming Forum so you know it is time for a quick blog post. Did you know that when you create a view and then later change the table the view is not updated? let me show you what I mean. Run the following block of code

VMware has released VI Toolkit 1.5. They have added 32 new cmdlets, enhanced their existing cmdlets, and fixed tons of bugs. VI Toolkit (for Windows) is a command-line and scripting tool built on Windows PowerShell, and provides more than 150 cmdlets for managing and automating your VMware Infrastructure. VI Toolkit (for Windows) 1.5 Beta supports the following VMware environments: VMware ESX 3.5 VMware ESX 3i VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 VMware ESX 3.

On Monday, January 26 at 12pm PT, Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) will be released to tech and consumer enthusiasts in a total of 25 languages. Users should visit www.microsoft.com/ie8 IT Professionals should visit http://technet.microsoft.com/ie Developers should visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/ie Since Beta 2, you’ll note some of the changes in RC1 include the following: ClickJacking protection. The SmartScreen Filter now includes the ability to help detect and prevent “ClickJacking” which is a malicious technique of tricking web users into revealing confidential information or taking control of their computer.