Remote joins are a situation SQL Server could handle better. Generally, an entire table is copied from one server to the other, which could potentially flood tempdb, then the join is performed locally. You can use a query hint to force which table is sent and which server the join is delegated to. A better solution will come in a later post, although this is just one situation that requires gigabytes of data to properly test.

By custom, this test data often comes from Cartesian joins. An example is:

Select * From sysObjects, sysComments, sysColumns

My test server doesn’t have enough space to execute this code. If sysComments is removed and the query is executed in a new, empty database, 20,000 rows will be returned ( using SQL Server 2005, Enterprise Edition ). The trouble is, the rows look very much alike, can easily be mistaken for one another, and make poor test data. Let’s try a better approach. (more…)

The Code

Set NoCount On
Declare @dbName varChar(200), @ins varChar(1000)–Internal use only
Declare
@searchName varChar(200),
@objType varChar(2),
@objTypeList varChar(300),
@owner varChar(200),
@excludeName varChar(100),
@ignoreDatabases varChar(1000),
@sort varChar(1000)
Set @searchName = ‘Log’
/*Set @objTypeList = ‘U, P, V, FN, TR’
Set @objType = ‘P’
Set @owner = ‘dbo’
Set @excludeName = ‘Backup-Log’*/
Set @searchName = IsNull(@searchName, ”)
Set @sort = IsNull(@sort, ‘DatabaseName, SchemaOwner, SqlObjectType’)
Set @ignoreDatabases = IsNull(@ignoreDatabases, ‘model, msdb, tempDB, master, ReportServerTempDB, ReportServer’)
Create Table #sqlSearchResults ( DatabaseName varChar(200), SchemaOwner varChar(100), ObjectName varChar(200), SqlObjectType varChar(2) )
Declare c Cursor Forward_Only For
Select name From master.dbo.sysDatabases
For Read Only
Open c
Fetch Next From c Into @dbName
While @@Fetch_Status = 0 Begin
If PatIndex(’%’ + @dbName + ‘%’, @ignoreDatabases) <= 0 Begin
Set @ins = ‘Insert Into #sqlSearchResults Select ”’ + @dbName + ”’ As DatabaseName, IsNull(U.Name, ”???”), O.Name, xType From ‘ + @dbName + ‘.dbo.sysObjects O Left Join ‘ + @dbName + ‘.dbo.sysUsers U On O.uid = U.uid Where (O.Name Like ”’ + ‘%’ + @searchName + ‘%”)’
If @objType Is Not Null Set @ins = @ins + ‘ And (xType = ‘ + ”” + @objType + ”’)’
If @owner Is Not Null Set @ins = @ins + ‘ And (U.Name = ‘ + ”” + @owner + ”’)’
If @objTypeList Is Not Null Set @ins = @ins + ‘ And (”’ + @objTypeList + ”’ Like ”%” + rTrim(xType) + ”%”)’
If @excludeName Is Not Null Set @ins = @ins + ‘ And (O.Name Not Like ‘ + ”’%’ + @excludeName + ‘%”)’
Exec(@ins)
End
–Print @ins
Fetch Next From c Into @dbName
End
Close c
DeAllocate c
Exec(‘Select * From #sqlSearchResults Order By ‘ + @sort)
Drop Table #sqlSearchResults

Arguments

There are seven variables you can set to control the search. All are optional; passing nothing in will return a list of all objects in all non-system databases. (more…)

Google Images is an example, and an edge case. Clicking an image from the search results takes you to a frameset, with Google’s branding along the top of the browser window, and the page the image was found on below. This is permissible use, however; Google Images sends my photography site about 8,500 visitors per month.

There are three main ways to steal and republish visual content, be it an image, video, or other media: (more…)

You might do this after restructuring a web site, to prevent links to moved pages from turning into dead ends. Or, you might do it to improve your standing with search engines, the way most WordPress blogs use a post’s date and title, rather than it’s ID in the database, to create “permalinks.” On Apache servers, this is accomplished with mod_rewrite in the .htaccess file, which isn’t available to IIS users.

Instead, developers running Microsoft’s web server, Internet Information Services, or IIS, have three options for rewriting. Let’s examine these, in reverse order by difficulty and cleverness. (more…)

While some of these tools are worth the price, they can easily become overkill. Especially considering how easy it is to gather this information yourself. Using the built-in functionality of the Microsoft .net Framework, we can gather a wealth of information about any reachable URL. From this point, testing an entire site involves little more than writing a loop. The code provided below doesn’t check whether the host machine is connected to the internet; if not a suitable error will be returned to the caller. For an example of how to test a machine’s connectivity, see this ASP Emporium article.

The WebStatus object defined below is re-usable, in the sense that once an instance of the class has been created, you can either use the object to cache state info until it falls out of scope, or you can use the object again and again to query new URLs. This has nothing to do with object oriented programming, but reduces pressure on the managed heap, allowing your application to use less memory and force less garbage collections.

(more…)

When an exception, which is really just a modern term for an error, does rear its ugly head, in addition to handling it gracefully, most applications need to do something with it. This might involve showing a message to the user, logging the fact that a problem happened for later inspection, or any number of things. A new open-source .net expands your options.

ExpressionFormatter is a static class, written in C# and targeting the Microsoft.net framework v2, that turns a managed Exception object into an html stream. In an ASP.NET application this lets you send a detailed, easily readable message directrly to the client (after they’ve been authorized!), but in a middle-tier, server-based application html is a fantastic way to store exception details for later review and drill-down analysis. In a Windows Forms client, you can log the exception for later use, and when it makes sense to, you can display it to the client using either a WebBrowser control or by writing an html file and using Process.Start to launch it.

(more…)