Category: Code

Software Development

Write to a text file from MS SQL Server

There are several things you need to know to be able to do this.

  1. How to enable ad hoc queries.
    This guy enable-Ad-Hoc-Distributed-Queries shows you how.
  2. How to format the driver string and specify your directory and filename. Like this:
    OpenRowset('MSDASQL', 'Driver={Microsoft Text Driver (*.txt; *.csv)};DefaultDir=c:\MyDirectoryName;','select * from MyTextFile.txt')
  3. How to create a text file in the right format. This format works:
    "ColumnName1","ColumnName2"
    "value11", "value21"
    "value21", "value22"

There. That was only slightly unreasonably difficult. Now you can

Select * from OpenRowset('MSDASQL', 'Driver={Microsoft Text Driver (*.txt; *.csv)}; DefaultDir=c:\MyDirectoryName;','select * from MyTextFile.txt')

and 

Insert into OpenRowset('MSDASQL', 'Driver={Microsoft Text Driver (*.txt; *.csv)};
DefaultDir=c:\MyDirectoryName;','select * from MyTextFile.txt')
Values ('Col1', 'Col2')

Localising programmatically in asp.net code behind

The usual examples for asp.net localisation are for the aspx markup page, not for the code behind.

In fact localisation, accessing localisation resource files programmatically, in code behind is also dead simple. You use GetLocalResourceObject() like so:

ctrl.Text = (string)GetLocalResourceObject("myCtrlKey.Text");
ctrl.AnotherAttribute = (string)GetLocalResourceObject("myCtrlKey.AnotherAttribute");

Using LocalResource means that for a page called MyPage.aspx, you have created a resource file called MyPage.aspx.resx and/or MyPage.aspx.{culturename}.resx in the special directory App_LocalResource.

If you like GlobalResources instead of local, use the special directory App_GlobalResource
to hold a resource file called MyResourceFileName.resx and call:

ctrl.Text= (string)GetGlobalResourceObject("MyResourceFileName", "myGlobalKey");

as per http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms227982.aspx

For a bit more of an overview of asp.net localisation, the page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms227427.aspx should only take you a few minutes to scan.

Switching between Visual Studio .Net and Mono with MonoDevelop

For reasons best not examined too closely I switch between between Mac and PC which, since I earn my crust largely with .Net development, means switching between Visual Studio and MS.Net and MonoDevelop with Mono.

Mono is very impressive, it is not at all a half hearted effort, and it does some stuff that MS haven't done. But when switching environments, there's always the occasional gotcha. Here are some that have got me, and some solutions.

Gotcha: Linq Expressions don't work on Mono

Solution: Add a reference to System.Core to your project.

Question: What version of NUnit is built in to mono?

As of Feb 2011, it's nunit 2.4.8.