Category: Technologies to build applications
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How to add a row number to an Excel table
Excel tables provide a lot of support for data processing and the use of structured references can improve readability. We want to number rows in an Excel table and we can do it really easily using structured references. =ROW(Table01[@])-ROW(Table01[[#Headers],[RowId]]) We simply find the row number of the current cell [@] using ROW and then subtract…
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A T-SQL SPLIT function
When taking existing data to put into a data warehouse one hopes that it is nicely formatted. This is seldom the case and recently I was faced with the problem that single field contained a rather dirty list. First I cleaned the list using REPLACE to replace the variety of delimiters with comma. Then I…
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SQL Server Import Wizard cannot import fields containing more than 255 characters
I have been importing data from Excel to SQL Server using the SQL Server Import Wizard. Usually there is no problem but I have found a bug. 1. To reproduce: Try to import a column containing more than 255 characters text, optimistically set the destination datatype to nvarchar(max) and the failure options to “ignore” on…
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A review of JavaScript drawing libraries for flowcharts, Gantt charts and timelines
Overview I manage my projects using my own ElephantPM project management methodology. This is a similar in many ways to PRINCE2 but is greatly simplified so that it is suitable for use by smaller organisations. My needs ElephantPM divides the Start-up stage into an analysis step and a planning step. During the analysis step it…
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How to create a calendar table with hourly grain
Calendar Tables – Why You Need One. <credit: This section was copied from Made2Mentor> What is a Date (Calendar) Table? For the purposes of this article a Date Table is a dedicated table containing a single record for each day in a defined range. They include fields with descriptive attributes for each day such as…
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Presentation tier: Smart Client vs Sencha Ext JS
For our current project Keyapt we have chosen to use Smartclient for the presentation tier. This is RESTfully coupled to business tier. Others I respect have chosen to use the Sencha tools for the same job. I thought it would be useful to find a comparison and found a good one on stack exchange. Smartclient…
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A review of Railo 3 Beginner’s Guide by Mark Drew
I have been blogging ColdFusion for several years and Mark’s publisher kindly sent me a copy of his new book to review. Railo 3 Beginner’s Guide is a great introduction to the ColdFusion language and using it on the free Railo Server. ColdFusion is a powerful and useful language for people who just want to…
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Creating data-driven graphs
I have a need to programmatically create flowcharts and organisational charts for use with an WordPress or Wiki site. This sort of diagram is called a “graph” (not be confused with “charts” in this context). Graph software falls into the scientific or commercial category. Good scientific packages include JUNG, Prefuse, Piccolo2D. These are optimised for…
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Keyapt – how to get an AJAX application in the Google index.
Our Android application Keyapt SMS is coming along nicely. Chris is tweaking the session management and I am doing the marketing plan. Keyapt SMS has three parts: the Android Application, the Web Client and the Keyapt Server in the middle that connects the PC to the mobile. The Web Client is a rich interface application…
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Amazon EC2, Rackspace or Google App Engine?
In an earlier post I blogged about my experience on Amazon EC2 (I like it) and referred the reader to an article on The Register from Damon Hart-Davis who is following a similar journey. Damon has continued his investigations and his next article is available. Readers of his earlier post will be pleased to see…
Dr James Bayley 