Raymond Lewallen

October 2005 - Posts

• Some inspiration for the young geeks

  Here’s a little inspiration for all you young geeks out there who may get picked on or made fun of, curtiousy of Penny Arcade.  (Note: slightly foul language is present, but nothing vulgar). Posted Oct 28 2005, 09:55 AM by Raymond Lewallen with no comments Filed under: Generalities

• Quick T-Sql to parse a delimited string

  I was working on some code to parse some data for a friend, and had to write this little piece of code that some of you might find useful.  Right now, you can just take this, pop it into query analyzer and run it.  Its simple enough to change this to a function that accepts the string, plus a delimeter value, such as: CREATE FUNCTION dbo.ParseString (@string varchar(500), @delimeter char(1)) RETURNS table Or do the same type thing using a stored procedure, whatever floats your boat.  You'll juse have to make some small modifications to the code. Here is the code: Parse a comma-delimeted string -- This would be the input parameter of the stored procedure, if you want to do it that way, or a UDF declare @string varchar(500) set @string = 'ABC,DEF,GHIJK,LMNOPQRS,T,UV,WXY,Z' declare @pos int declare @piece varchar(500) -- Need to tack a delimiter onto the end of the input string if one doesn't exist if right(rtrim(@string),1) <> ','  set @string = @string  + ',' set @pos =  patindex('%,%' , @string) while @pos <> 0 begin  set @piece = left(@string, @pos - 1)    -- You have a piece of data, so insert it, print it, do whatever you want to with it.  print cast(@piece as varchar(500))  set @string = stuff(@string, 1, @pos, '')  set @pos =  patindex('%,%' , @string) end The above code outputs: ABC DEF GHIJK LMNOPQRS T UV WXY Z Posted Oct 26 2005, 08:48 AM by Raymond Lewallen with 17 comment(s) Filed under: Sql Development

• Congrats to a friend and Channel 9 is hiring

  Erik Porter has accepted a position at Microsoft on the Evangelism team for Channel9, Microsoft Gadgets, etc. Erik is a co-author of a couple of VB.Net books, a VB.Net MVP, an ASPInsider, VP of his local user group, a great idea man and a good friend in general.  Oddly enough though, he currently lives in a steel mill and has no idea who Derek Jeter is.  He is also 1/6th of project FAZR, soon to be only a silent partner.  I’ve only known Erik for about 4 months or so, but it seems I have had daily conversations with him, and hope to get to keep having conversations with him in the future. I want to with the best of luck to my friend Erik and I know he’ll be an awesome addition to the team at Microsoft. Also, the Channel 9 Team is still hiring. Posted Oct 26 2005, 08:32 AM by Raymond Lewallen with no comments Filed under: Generalities

• NHibernate 1.0 has been released

  Yes, it finally made it to 1.0!  Yay for NHibernate! NHibernate is one of those object persistence tools I’ve played around with a bit, like Wilson OR Mapper or LLBLGenPro.  I’ve used all three here and there on different projects, but haven’t committed to one yet.  Not that I was really waiting on NHibernate to make it to v1.0, but now that it has, I suppose I should get down to it and make a decision and blog on the why I chose one over the other, which basically comes down to the persistence model for me, and not necessarily the ease of use.  As far as IDE, LLBLGenPro is hands down way cool.  However, if something is out that has an “N” in front of its name, I’m pretty much using it these days.  I’d hate to break my uniformity :) Posted Oct 12 2005, 08:45 AM by Raymond Lewallen with 11 comment(s) Filed under: .Net Development, Most Popular, Patterns and Practices

• Microsoft IntelliSense XML Files for Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System Solution Developers

  Microsoft IntelliSense XML Files for Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System Solution Developers Adds summary descriptions of types, members, and parameters to IntelliSense ToolTips in code and in the Object Browser for Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, and Microsoft Office 2003 Shared PIAs in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005. Posted Oct 12 2005, 08:31 AM by Raymond Lewallen with 2 comment(s) Filed under: .Net Development

• A little RnR for me and the wife, kinda

  This week is very exciting.  My wife and I, along with my sister and brother-in-law, have front row seats to see our favorite band perform this Wednesday night, Big and Rich.  They are one of the hottest and most energetic shows on the road right now, and its going to be a blast!  John Rich is from Amarillo, 15 miles north of where my wife and I grew up, and they are playing at a brand new arena in our hometown of Canyon, TX.  This is John Rich’s first time to perform in his hometown since hitting the big time and becoming one of the hottest and best-selling country groups, along with Big Kenny, around today. The venue is actually pretty small, only 5000 tickets being sold.  I’m hoping to get some things autographed for me, my wife and my daugher.  A venue that small, I would think it would be easier to do that then when under normal 20,000 fans circumstances. The concert we’re attending: http://getout.amarillo.com/content/outloud/093005_bigandrich.shtml Fan photos – if you scroll a bit over halfway down, you’ll see 2 photos of my daugher watching her “cowboys”.  She’s the 2 year old in the pink jumper, and the picture right after that too, both submitted by Jana Lewallen. Big $ Rich website Posted Oct 03 2005, 10:15 AM by Raymond Lewallen with no comments Filed under: Generalities

• .Net Developers Group Meeting in OKC October 1st

  Sorry, I’m a little late on getting this out. If you are in the Oklahoma City area today, come by and check this out. Speakers: Chris Menegay (Lunch)    Chris Menegay is a Principal Consultant for Notion Solutions. He has been helping clients develop business applications for over 10 years, most recently using Microsoft's .NET development platform. Chris places an emphasis on good design and architecture and has experience with both thick-client .NET applications as well as browser-based, ASP.NET applications. Recently, Chris has been working with Microsoft to develop training materials for Visual Studio Team System, and has been hired by Microsoft to teach Team System classes to customers around the world. He has written white papers and articles on Team System for MSDN and MSDN Magazine. Chris is also a Microsoft .NET MVP and a Microsoft Regional Director. Caleb Jenkins (Dinner) Caleb Jenkins a senior consultant for Geniant, a Microsoft Managed Gold Partner, and is the President of the Tulsa .Net Users Group. As a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer and .Net Architect he has architected enterprise solutions for some of the largest companies in the world, including, CGI-AMS, Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group and Sunoco Inc. Before that, Caleb was a Microsoft Certified Trainer for New Horizons Computer Learning Center, where he instructed on .Net technologies.    Topic:  Digging into Visual Studio Team System  This demo-rich presentation will cover many of the different aspects of Visual Studio 2005 Team System. After beginning with a brief overview of the Team System product features, the session will consist primarily of demonstrations of the following items: Team Projects MS Project integration Unit Testing Static Code Analysis Manual Testing Other topics as time permits Posted Oct 03 2005, 10:04 AM by Raymond Lewallen with no comments Filed under: .Net Development