Bytes and Bites of Internet
Archive for February, 2011
Task history for Windows Scheduled Tasks !!
Feb 20th
Though user’s workstations are usually upgraded with time, but generally servers are not so lucky. I guess they are last in the row (if the ever consider to be upgrade worthy), so if you are somehow required to work on these systems then it certainly gives you feel of old age computing (at least its true for me). I think main reason for not upgrading system very by organizations, but common issues can be described as incompatibility with legacy systems, unsupported 3rd party or home grown applications … or sometimes management thinks that if its working then just don’t dare to touch it 
Few days back I was assigned really interesting task. I was required to find history of specific task which was scheduled in windows scheduler to run at specific intervals and it was failing un-deterministically. Our production server was using Windows Server 2003. Now, I have worked with Windows 2003, but after using vista, 7 and lately Linux, when I logged in to server, it was feeling like really ancient system. So at first I had no clue where to look for task scheduler history. I knew that they have, but don’t know where windows is keeping it.
Integrating Silverlight in Web Site
Feb 16th
I should say I work for really great company. And it is not just because I work there but it is because of their internal user group !! Yes, we have an internal user group and we regularly do meeting where employees do presentation on current / new technologies. Some technologies which we can use in current and future development projects and some are just to let others know what is going on out side of their work place 
… I believe that every company should have user groups like this. It not only gives employees information of new technologies but also creates kind of healthy team environment. And we call it “Techno Lunch” (Yes its Lunch and we order Pizza 
)
I am kind of fresh start in this company, so I have been to just few meetings. In our last meeting I decided to do a little presentation on stuff that I like to do, a web designing. Well, I don’t have designer gene in me so honestly I am terrible with design stuff but I still try to improve my self because I believe that people will only use your application if it looks nice … yes it is fact … if you have superfine application but with terrible UI then it just won’t get attention. On the other hand if your UI is really nice and application sucks … people will still like it (or atleast try it … and then dump it once they find that your application really sucks 
)
Microsoft DreamSpark … supporting students
Feb 13th
I think when we are student, we always try to find ways to save money so we can spend more in weekends 
… but on the other end we are always required to be on edge with tools and technologies. Hence sometimes we end up paying for tools that we really need for study just like we need books. But just like many other companies, Microsoft too provides few free software that are really useful during our student life.
Actually Microsoft has a web portal called “DreamSpark” which is just for students and which offers few popular Microsoft products like Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio, Expression Studio for free !! As long as you have university email id you can register your self and you can download those software for free. More good thing is they keep adding / upgrading new tools for example till few time ago, they were offering Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 … but with release of newer version they are now also offering Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2 !! I still visit that site frequently to check if they are providing something new. I just recently saw that they are now providing Microsoft Mathematics (which was in old days known as Microsoft Maths), which is a really cool tool to work with equations and other mathematical problems of any type.
So, if you are a student I think it is really great opportunity to try full version of Microsoft stuffs for free. Its is very easy , all you need is to have hotmail/msn account and then go to https://www.dreamspark.com/ select the software that you want to download, sign in and get verified by selection your university and provide your email id (usually email ids end with .EDU ). They will send you an email for confirmation on that edu email id and then you can download the software you want. Or if you are like me, you will download most of it 
…
Anyways, I have been using that site from quite a few time so I thought it is my moral duty to let fellow people to know about this one … ok ok … actually I had nothing to blog about so I am just babbling about it …
That’s it for now…
It’s Just A Thought … 
SQL Agent Error : Unable to start JobManager thread for job XXXX
Feb 9th
This week, we had really really strange error in one of our production databases. We had few jobs running internally (SQL Agent) and externally (Windows Scheduler) for usual data fetching and feeding. But yesterday, we got notification from our watchdog application (which basically monitors our system/job status) start sending us alert messages that jobs are failing. Upon investigation of Agent log, we found that jobs were failing with message of
error, [380] Unable to start JobManager thread for job JOB_NAME
SQL Server log and Windows logs were not showing any specific error as well. We resolved the issue by simply restarting the SQL Agent but we wanted to find real cause of this error. So I decided to do little more digging into this error and found that it is kind of common error.
I found few suggestions though …
Open one XAML page from another XAML page …
Feb 1st
Recently, I was required to dig lot deeper into new Silverlight 4 because of my work. I’ve been playing with previous versions but it was not “that” serious engagement, as it was never part of my “job” … I was just doing it to satisfy my craving for new technologies. But now I am required to learn it more seriously like my life (read as my job) depends on it 
…
As you already know, we can design/develop Silverlight application using either Visual Studio or Expression Studio (or specifically Expression Blend). But based on my experience with Silverlight (which is not much) design and development, I think Expression Blend is good tool to “Design” the application and Visual Studio is excellent tool for “Development” of the application. So, in a way now a days it is always required for developer to have super good understanding of both Expression Blend and Visual Studio (and latest version of Expression Blend is just awesome 
). Something that really bugs me about Silverlight is, it can’t communicate with database directly !! So, you are always required to make it talk with some kind of WCF service which is getting data from database, which can prove a bit difficult if you are amateur developer like me 
…