Don't know how to create a banner?

Here are some easiest links to create them for your blog.

This is one of the links that I liked the most where you can create a banner just in five minutes. I have created my banner using this.

There are also other sites like create banner, cool text, 3Dtextmaker etc.

Hope these links are useful.

Test Microsoft's new Web Design app! (EXCLUSIVE BETA)

Microsoft is testing their new Expression Web Design tool, and it's an EXCLUSIVE BETA! Once 5000 signups are done, the beta will be closed off and no one else can participate. So far, this promises to be better than front page (think Microsoft's own version of Dreamweaver) so I think this is worth signing up for.

read more digg story

Stored Procedures in SQL Server -- Permissions

This is a small code that displays stored procedures/functions for which the user does or does not have permissions to execute. In the event, the user has no permissions, also display the grant SQL neccesary to give them EXECUTE permissions.


*/ /* Set this to your desired target database */

USE DATABASE_NAME
DECLARE @TARGETUSER varchar(255), @SHOWPERMS bit SELECT

/* Set this to your desired target user */
@TARGETUSER = 'USER NAME HERE',

/* Set this to 0 (zero) to show objects the user has NOpermissions upon */

/* Set this to 1 (one) to show objects the user HAS permissionsupon */

@SHOWPERMS = 0

IF ( @SHOWPERMS) = 0
BEGIN PRINT 'showing no permissions'
SELECT name, id FROM sysobjects
WHERE
xtype IN ( 'P', 'TF' )
AND base_schema_ver < 16
AND id NOT IN
( SELECT SO.id FROM syspermissions SP
LEFT JOIN sysusers SU ON ( SP.grantee = SU.uid )
LEFT JOIN sysobjects SO ON ( SP.id = SO.id )
WHERE ( UPPER(SU.name) = UPPER (@TARGETUSER)
) )
print 'GRANT EXECUTE statements ... '

SELECT 'GRANT EXECUTE ON [' + name + '] TO [' + @TARGETUSER + ']'
FROM sysobjects
WHERE
xtype IN ( 'P', 'TF' )
AND base_schema_ver < 16
AND id NOT IN ( SELECT SO.id FROM syspermissions SP
LEFT JOIN sysusers SU ON ( SP.grantee =SU.uid )
LEFT JOIN sysobjects SO ON ( SP.id =SO.id )
WHERE ( UPPER(SU.name) = UPPER(@TARGETUSER) ) )
END ELSE
BEGIN PRINT 'showing no permissions'

SELECT SU.name, SO.name, SO.xtype FROM syspermissions SP
LEFT JOIN sysusers SU ON ( SP.grantee = SU.uid )
LEFT JOIN sysobjects SO ON ( SP.id = SO.id )
WHERE ( UPPER( SU.name ) = UPPER ( @TARGETUSER )
AND SO.xtype IN ( 'P', 'TF' ) )
ORDER BY SU.name

END

[/code]

Collaboration of Businesses and Programmers

I have found a very interesting website today which connects businesses with programmers. Hence if you would like to earn some money with the skills that you know and enjoy working with why not sign up?

Or do you have a project which you would like to get done but don't have the staff to do it. Again this is the place for you to post your project.

What is SQL Profiler?

Do you use SQL Server? Are you losing track of what's going on when you run your code on SQL Server? Then you must know of this tool called SQL Profiler.

SQL Profiler uses an integrated SQL parser to build statistics on the most accessed tables and columns and can generate SQL index creation files. Other information is also gathered and displayed, such as the request time for a single request, for a class of request, and for all the requests. Sorting may be done on these views to detect database problems efficiently.

This tool can be very useful when you have a big volume of queries that you need to analyze not one by one (meaning that the specific time isn't that much of interest), but rather when you want to know what "group" of queries is taking a lot of time, such as queries on the same tables and columns but with different query values.

You can use this as an audit tool as well particular when you want to watch the traffic on your sql server.

How do I get SQL Profiler?

SQL Profiler is one of the standard suite of client tools that are distributed with SQL Server 2000. You can install these tools from the SQL Server setup disk; they are a part of the main SQL Server setup, but you don't have to install SQL Server to install the client tools.

After installing the client tools, you can launch SQL Profiler by selecting Start, Programs, Microsoft SQL Server, Profiler. SQL Profiler will open without apparently doing anything. It's waiting for you to define a trace: a set of characteristics that tell it what to keep an eye on. That is what it does, keeps an eye on what's going on in the database.

Open Source Web Design

Here are two open source webdesign links that I have found today.

• Open SOurce Web Design
• Open Web Design

There are quite a few nice designs in there. Go have a look for yourself

Free Vs. Open Source Software

I have been hearing these terms "Free Software" and "Open Source Software". What is the difference between these two or is there a difference?

The term "Free Software" was first used by Richard of the GNU Project because he wanted to give users "Freedom"

The term "Open Source Software" was coined by Eric Raymond and Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute to avoid the misinterpretation of free being cheap.

The term ``open source'' quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable. The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are today separate movements with different views and goals.

Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.

Daylight Saving -- Facts

As today we have to change the daylight saving time back to normal, I was wondering how this daylight saving came about. I did some research and found the following.

It was originally conceived by Benjamin Franklin. in an essay, "An Economical Project." Read more about Franklin's essay.

Later on the idea was first advocated seriously by London builder William Willett (1857-1915) in the pamphlet, "Waste of Daylight" (1907), that proposed advancing clocks 20 minutes on each of four Sundays in April, and retarding them by the same amount on four Sundays in September.


It was Germany who first adopted by Germany in 1915 and a year later Braitain followed. During World War II, the clocks in Britain were put 2 hrs ahead of GMT during Summer. This was called Double Summer then.

It was adopted in the US only in 1918.

Today, approximately 70 countries utilize Daylight Saving Time in at least a portion of the country.

And still some countries like Japan, India, Sri Lanka, China, Pakistan and many others.

Do you want to make your blog famous?

If you want to get more people to view your blog from all over the world, you can try blogmad. Currently it is through invitation only.

If you would like to get invited comment here with your email address.

The latest Buzzword SOA -- What is it?

SOA is an acronymn for Service oriented architecture. These days we see a lot of this acronymn being used in IT magazines, IT conferences etc.

According to www.service–architecture.com:

“A service-oriented architecture is essentially a collection of services. These services communicate with each other. The communication can involve either simple data passing or it could involve two or more services coordinating some activity. Some means of connecting services to each other is needed.

Service-oriented architectures are not a new thing. The first service-oriented architecture for many people in the past was with the use DCOM or Object Request Brokers (ORBs) based on the CORBA specification.”

You can read the full article on what SOA is and What it isn't here

Opening Excel from an email in Outlook

I came across this problem today where Excel by default opens a s a 'Read Only' when opened from an email.

This is because the macros of the sender of the email are set to 'High'. This option automatcially sends the excel attachement in the email as 'Read Only' file making it difficult for the user to make changes.

This problem can be overcome by setting the Macro Security to Low in the Senders outlook. To do this, go to Tools -- Macro -- Security -- Choose Low and save the setting.

Date and Dateserial functions in Crystal Reports

I found a solution for my date problem in Crystal reports after 15 days of investigating.

The Date function of Crystal Reports requires arguments of year, month and day in that order as Date(y,m,d). But the Date function fails if there are special cases.

The dateserial function behaves in a similar way to Date function but is more tolerant

For example a value larger than 12 or less than one will still calculate a valid month, and will adjust the year correctly if DateSerial(y,m,d) is used.
Days work in a slightly different way. A value of 0 gets the last day of the previous month. This makes sense if you think that 1 gives you the first of the month, so 0 must get the day before.

For more information on functions in Crystal REports you can visit here

Microsoft is doing new Web 2.0ish things with a twist

Looks like Microsoft is investing even more into a business model Web 2.0 style with a twist.

See: http://officelive.microsoft.com/
Some of the main Web 2.0 elements are all there:

1. On-line service free for the subscriber.
2. Subscribers are the content providers.
3. Service released early as Beta.
4. Advertisement supported model.

Obviously they also have to inject their Microsoft twist to it; infiltrate and conquer...

If you try to subscribe using FireFox they tell you to go get IE.Again, Here again a twist.

Creating a single line graph in Excel

Today I was asked a question from my friend as to how to add a single line graph in excel. That is how to display a line graph between price and quantity in excel with price in X-axis and quantity in Y-axis. When you select line graph in excel, that gives two line graphs one for quantity and one for price.


To arrive at a single line graph here is the procedure to follow. Enter the data into two coulmns of price and quantity as shown. Then select the two columns and click on chart wizard.




Select XY(Scatter) for Chart type. And the first one without any lines for the sub chart as shown. Click once on "Press and Hold to View Sample" to check whether the X-axis and Y-axis values look as what you are expecting. Then click next and change the X-axis and Y-axis values appropriately for both the series.


Then click on Finish. You get a range of dots which can then be connected by a line. To do this, click on chart and then on a "Add a trend line". Choose automatic and your line graph is ready.

Monitoring ports on server

The terms "server" and "network" go hand-in-hand. Without a network, a server is essentially useless. Putting a server on a network means opening ports on that server to listen and respond to incoming requests, but every port you open can lead to potential security problems.

It's a good idea to closely monitor the ports that are open on a server in order to identify unwanted or rogue services, and identify other services that can be shut down to improve security. One tool you can use to monitor open ports is the netstat command, included with Windows 2000 Server.

To identify ports with netstat, open a command console and type the following command: netstat -a. To view IP address for local and remote addresses rather than host names, add the -n switch: nestat -an. If you only want to view active connections and not listening ports, use the netstat command without any switches.

Ruby on Rails

Have you heard about Ruby on Rails?

It is a new way to develop web applications,

This article steps through the development of a web application using Rails.


Go ahead and try it when you have some time.

Google Pages (Beta Version)

Google has unveiled Google Pages ( a beta version) which lets you create websites online using simple drag & drop WYSIWYG editor. It gives you a 100MB storage space and a subdomain at http://www.googlepages.com/. It's pretty much like Yahoo Geocities but with no ads and huge storage space and easy-to-use tools.

Wonder how this is going to get them revenue?

Trademe.co.nz sold. Guess for how much??

Trade Me is New Zealand’s only online auction site. A site created by New Zealanders for New Zealanders, the company has already experienced the benefits of having the homeground advantage when eBay tried unsuccessfully to enter the New Zealand market in 2001.

Today Australasian newspaper publisher, John Fairfax Holding, paid NZ$700 million for buying online auctioneer, TradeMe. This shocked many commentators and analysts.

Is 700 million too much?

What is Supergluing? Do you know?

I came about this word Supergluing today. There is a site called Suprglu.com This is a website where you can gather all your content from the different websites you publish and publish them in one place. Above all it is free!

Here is My Superglue


So why delay? Start Supergluing.

Happy Supergluing!

WYSIWIG Editors

Peter Krantz of Standards Schmandards has published his evaluation of some popular web editing tools. So if you're on the lookout for some WYSIWYG-editors for your content management project or blog, you might want to read this review first.