if @@error != 0
begin
RAISERROR 50001 'Some error message'
RETURN
end
This has obvious problems (lots of extra code, what if you miss an error message, etc...). However, SQL Server 2005 has try-catch statements!
BEGIN TRY
{ sql_statement | statement_block }
END TRY
BEGIN CATCH
{ sql_statement | statement_block }
END CATCH
[ ; ]
This is definitely a convenient thing.
I was talking to a friend about confidence with technical skills. Here's a brain dump of my thoughts:
Technical skills are good, but when working with people we need people-skills too, like confidence and leadership.
Knowledge + Experience will drive up confidence
Some people view confidence as a Darwinist "survival-of-the-fittest, no-one pushes me around", self-empowering ordeal. I think that's crap. Rather, I view confidence as a service to your coworkers - by being confident (and having the track-record to back it up), you can give you coworkers peace-of-mind as they know that you will solve the problem, and they don't need to worry about it.
What confidence is:
Confidence Is not:
Ideas to practice confidence:
Wikis are an interesting concept; a wiki is a website that lets users directly edit the content using a simple syntax. Wikipedia is perhaps the most famous, and biggest, wiki around. By letting anyone edit any page, this allows a lot of community feedback. It removes much of the red tape and bottlenecks that slow down other collaborative sites. Of course there are problems – such as vandalism (a malicious user ruins a page), but there are ways around this, such as reverting the page to the previous revision, or giving only certain users access to certain “controversial” pages.
Several developers have made FlexWiki, open-source, ASP.Net-based Wiki. It’s quick to set up, and built in .Net so it’s easy to modify or improve.
An interesting paper explaining the technical issues of Wikis is Mattias Beermann’s Collaborative web content management – Wiki and beyond.
If there's any sharp Software Engineers in the Chicago, IL area looking for a new job, my company, Paylocity (www.paylocity.com) is hiring. I've been at several good companies, and this is by far the best Software Development place I've personally seen. We're developing a .Net application for Payroll. Here are some of the perks:
You can see an official description here.
If you're interested, just contact me at tims@paylocity.com.
A coworker of mine suggest this tool to test web page accessibility, looks good:
http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/ais/toolbar/
Coding requires constant learning. Here are some ideas to help with that:
1 - Be prepared to spend not just time, but mental energy.
2 - Find ways to get input:
3 - Make the intent of your code clear so that others can help. If Bob doesn't know what you're trying to do, Bob can't easily help you.
There's obviously a lot more to say on this, I'll make some follow-up posts.
Sometimes when writing a tool or automated process, you want to read in the console output and send it to a string. From there, you can do whatever you want to it, such as parse for info. For example, a third-party tool (not necessarily even built with .Net) may display result information to the console, and you may want that info as part of some bigger process. The classes to do this reside in System.Diagnostics.
public static string GetConsoleOutput(string strFileName, string strArguments)
{
ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo();
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
try
{
psi.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
//Need to include this for Executable version (appears not to be needed if UseShellExecute=true)
psi.CreateNoWindow = true;
psi.FileName = strFileName;
psi.Arguments = strArguments;
psi.UseShellExecute = false;
psi.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
psi.RedirectStandardError = true;
Process p = Process.Start(psi);
sb.Append(p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd());
sb.Append(p.StandardError.ReadToEnd());
p.WaitForExit();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
sb.Append("\r\nPROCESS_ERROR:" + ex.ToString()); ;
}
return sb.ToString();
}
