Scott Elkin

Author: Scott

  • Using SQL Where Clauses for Searching

    One piece of SQL lore I take for granted is COALESCE(). The dictionary definition describes SQL's use pretty close as “To bring or come together into a united whole”. Books Online states in laymans terms that SQL allows you to pass any number of arguments to the function, and it will return the first non-null…

  • Retrieving Values from SQL Exec()

    Never had a good reason to do this up until now, but if you need to get a value from a generated sql string, there are a few hoops you must jump through. Example: declare @table varchar(20) ,@username varchar(30)–can't use double quotes w/out this :)SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF–set your variablesselect @table = 'tblcustomers' ,@username = 'webmaster'–create…

  • Sql Dependencies

    This is a rad sproc to find dependencies from Brett. Sometimes I come across a sproc that I *think* I can delete but you never can be too sure. This makes that process A LOT easier. I am reposting it here for my own benefit with some slight formatting differences to make it easier for…

  • Let My People Go

    Ahh, Passover…how fondly I remember thee. A lot of food: A lot of wine: And plenty of prayers: In all seriousness, one of the best Passovers. The food was phenomenal thanks to my mother-in-law and aunt-in-law for the majority, and the company was good fun. The trick is having 3 or 4 times more people…

  • Deauthorize iTunes Before Reformatting

    I added this to my Reinstall Windows Todo List, but felt I should devote one blog on it because of its importance. To put it simply, iTunes allows you to play or “authorize” your music on up to 5 computers. If you reformat your machine before “deauthorizing” it, you waste one of those licenses. As…

  • Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 For Free

    Well, almost free. You have to pay tax and shipping for $6.48. Get it here.

  • Reinstalling Windows

    Something great happens when you finally succumb to the inevitable fact that you need to wipe your machine. That happened for me at 4 PM yesterday. Over the last few weeks, I tried everything to speed it up, but no amount of defrag’ing, deleting, uninstalling was doing it. But when you finally relent to what…

  • Mixed Martial Arts vs. Boxing

    I am not going to pretend I do not have a bias here, but I honestly cannot for the life of me understand who would watch boxing over Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). I got to watch the Ultimate Fighting Championship with some bro's last Saturday and it was just so fun, and we digressed on…

  • Windows 2003 SP1 Errors

    Since I installed SP1 here are the problems I am having: MSN Messenger gives me 4 script errors each time I sign in: Line 373, Char 2, Unspecified error, URL: http://t.msn.com/en-us/default.aspx?ver=7.0.0777&did=1 MSN Messenger will prevent me from using the ENTER key when sending a message. Once I restart it, it will work for awhile before…

  • Sleeping on the Couch Arm