When Wizards Get in the Way

Antonio — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:57:07 +0000

Many of Microsoft’s development products, when given an SQL query, will try to perform all sorts of analysis and breakdowns on the query — usually in an attempt to visualize what’s going on. When the queries become too complex (as the tend to be), they just can’t be parsed and visualized. Furthermore, when the successful parsing of a query is critical to one of their “wizards”, your report creation process can be brought to a standstill.

Queries that have a few levels of subquery nesting, or that have UNIONs, for example, will sometimes break parsing.

So, if you don’t want your development tools (such as Visual Studio) to get in the way of completing a report wizard, put your SQL query in a stored procedure. This way, your tools won’t be concerned with the nitty gritty details of your query. You can still pass @variables to the query, and you can make changes to the query without stepping into your designer’s .rdlc files.

Microsoft Sharepoint 101

Antonio — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 19:06:26 +0000

In the interests of expanding my technical abilities, I’ve picked up a copy of Microsoft Sharepoint 2007 for Dummies. I spent a few hours at the Barnes & Noble at Riverside Square, Paramus, NJ skimming through various books on this subject. I found the “For Dummies” version to be the most “in-plain-English” and “non-Microsoft-tech-speak”. If you don’t know what “Microsoft-tech-speak” is, be very happy.

After standing on line for a good 20 minutes, (post-Christmas shoppers), I drove home with a new-found source of knowledge. Less than halfway through the first chapter of the book, I read this:

“SharePoint requires a lot of skills, and it’s not likely that you have all of them. I know I sure don’t. You have to make arrangements to acquire the skills you don’t have in-house.”

“I know I sure don’t” Not exactly the confidence boost I need. Continuing with the rest of the chapter though, SharePoint somehow seems manageable. Tameable.

I just need to sit down at a working Sharepoint install, or at least Windows Server 2003 so I can get SharePoint up and running. This book has a whole chapter on installing SharePoint. More updates as I continue reading.

Solution Log | Antonio David - NVNCBL » microsoft

When Wizards Get in the Way

Microsoft Sharepoint 101