Bytes and Bites of Internet
Gaurang
First thing I would like to write is a question .... Why the hack people write their bio in 3rd person ? I am Gaurang. I work as DBA / DEV for local company in CT. When I am not working, I am either reading other blogs n news OR "researching" / "experimenting" about things that I can do at home / at work OR tinkering with some new hardware/software OR playing games on my desktop. If you ever wanted to contact me, I can be reached by meATgaurangpatel.net
Homepage: http://gaurangpatel.net
Posts by Gaurang
Send emails using Database Mail … from SQL Server
May 19th
Back in Pre SQL Server 2005 editions of SQL Server there was nice feature called SQL Mail which basically allowed users to send email from within database server. But that system has many dependencies and major one was requirement of Microsoft Exchange… thus usage was severely limited to enterprise customers who has resources to setup such a system. When MSFT released SQL Server 2005 they introduced new feature called Database Mail which replaced SQL Mail … and they removed all kind of external dependencies. Now all you had to do was to provide just SMTP server and you are all set !!
I always thought that I have blogged about process to setup Database mail but it appears that I never did so today I am going to write about step-by-step process to setup / configure database mail. Since we have moved on from 2005 to 2008 to 2008R2 to 2012 …. I am going to use SQL Server 2012 edition but process remains same for previous editions too.
Database Mail can be found under “Management” group in SQL Server Management Studio. To configure Database Mail right click on it and select “Configure Database Mail” which will start configuration wizard. It will show bunch of options like “Set up Database Mail”, “Manage”, “Change system parameters”. Since we have not setup this before we are going to select first option, “Setup Database Mail by performing following tasks”. And with that selected click next.
Code Camp 6 this weekend
May 12th
Ok, just like every year this year too we have code camp organized by CT .NET user group. If you don’t know what these events are then in one line … think of it as a one day training on different subjects (mostly related to .NET) by subject experts all around CT and near by states 
… I have been going to this camp for past 4 years … and they usually have really great range of subjects.
On a side note, I think I am going to skip this year… because I really don’t find that “interesting” presentation topics … even some are already presented in other events is SQL Saturday or user group meetings …
You can get more details about this event from event website, Code Camp 6
And this time it is going to be held at Saturday, May 18th.
Location is:
New Horizons Learning Center,
340 West Newberry Rd,
Bloomfield, CT 06002 USA
Update: (5/17/13) It looks like that event is sold out !!
Setting up Domain Controller in Virtual System … Part II
May 11th
So after setting up Domain Controller (DC) next step is to configure workstations and add them into newly created Domain. It is actually not that difficult part but during my early trials I spent quite a bit time to make these workstations connect to DC. Because even though they were part of same network they were not able to “see” DC because they had different DNS and it took me while to figure that out.
Anyways, first step is to setup fixed IP of workstation. And make sure that in it’s DNS, use IP of DC.
Setting up Domain Controller in Virtual System … Part I
Apr 28th
If you are like me, who like to “experiment” with random software downloaded from Source Forge, CodePlex or anything alike … on top of working on bunch of side projects in different work environments … and you have a “bug” in your mind which make you learn anything and everything .. then I am sure that you have always craved to have a domain controller of your own .. I mean imagine about trying different networking theories to server-client application development to database management … 
But biggest issue with having personal Domain Controller is you need separate hardware which you can use as a domain controller and it has to be running all the time which could be biggest constraint for many follow IT Professionals and if you are cheapskate like me then you probably have very nice machine but just 1 or 2 machines (not talking about puny laptops … but bigass desktops)… and you want to get as much juice as you can get from that beast (!!) . But if you are not that serious then you can actually use one virtual machine to be as Domain Controller and many other virtual machines as your toys. And in this post I am going to show step by step how to do that ….
To my surprise there are not many “how to” available about setting up domain controller using virtual machines .. hack they don’t have much posts about setting up DC with real hardware !! So it took me real long .. and many tries to have some proper machine to have working domain controller (some were due to unforeseen side effect of using virtual machine). Mainly because this process is not as straight forward as it seems (or that’s what networking guys makes you think 
)… Okey enough babbling … now the process ….
First you need a good clean virtual machine with new SIDs. Alternatively you can create your own clean image using SYSPREP (built into Windows). I can’t stress enough that if you have an existing image of virtual machine make sure that you use this SYSPREP to prepare nice clean image and use THAT image to setup DC otherwise you will run into weird issues and you will spend hours scratching your ….. head 
. I am using evaluation edition Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, because later on I also want to setup 2 node cluster but that will take some time 
for now just stick with current task at hand … setting up virtual Domain Controller.
If the image is created using SYSPREP then once booted, it will do some installation and configuration of OS.
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No Google Store update for my Nexus 7
Apr 14th
Apparently there is update for Google store. And now it has very sleek ‘n sexy UI. I have got this update few days back in my Galaxy Nexus … but it looks like that for some odd reasons my Nexus 7 haven’t received this update till now 
!! Actually there are APKs available for download for store but I am bit of hesitant of install anything from not known resource. I guess I will wait (while someone replies to my question at XDA) and see what happens …
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Or may be I will finally decide to install Cyanogenmod on my Nexus 7 just like my Galaxy Nexus 
BI templates in Visual Studio 2012–SSDT BI tools
Apr 9th
If you have used new Visual Studio 2012 then you know that it is missing one of very useful “feature” for SQL Server guys. That was BI templates for different projects of SSRS, SSIS and SSAS. And it as one of the main reasons for me not moving completely to VS 2012. But few weeks back MSFT released sort of update for Visual Studio 2012… it is called SSDT BI tools (SQL Server Data Tools – Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2012).
This is about 800 MB download and once installed it will add BI project templates in VS 2012.
Editing MSI with OCRA
Mar 31st
If you have worked with MSI then you probably know that it uses an internal database to store all kind of information and you can actually directly modify this information by using a great tool OCRA. It is tiny utility released by MSFT.
But unfortunately it is not “that” simple to get OCRA because it is not available as separate download , instead it is part of Windows SDK. Which means that if you want OCRA you have to download whole Windows 7 SDK. And even after downloading whole 1.4 Gb ISO, this tools is not easily visible. Once you download ISO (for x64 bit download), either make DVD or mount it as virtual drive (my preferred option) then go to \Setup\WinSDKTools_amd64 and open up cab1.cab. Inside that you will see WinSDK_Orca_Msi_5E20C107_DAA3_4D49_AFAE_7FB2594F0CDC_amd64 , extract that file and add extension .msi to it. And that is your installation for OCRA !! I really don’t know why such a great tool is hidden so deep by MSFT (and it is not the only great tool neglected by them). Once you install it you will see an additional entry “Edit with OCRA” in context menu whenever you right click on MSI.