Just A Thought
Bytes and Bites of Internet
And I have “4,294,967,295” messages in my inbox !!
Feb 27th
I have more then 4 billion messages in my inbox, and without doubt I will be record holder for “the most emailed a person ever” or “person with super giant mail box” or “person who does nothing but keeps getting (and reading) emails” …..and so on …..
Don’t believe me … here is the proof … a snapshot from my mail client
And say if each message is of minimal size, 1 KB then for all of these messages my local mail box will be of approximately 4TB in size !! (think of re-downloading all messages again if my PC dies 
) .. Pretty cool right ??
Template for Report … Unifying report layouts
Feb 18th
Most of the companies use some sort of unique format for their reports and this layout is kept same for all of their reports to create some sort of identity or brand. And for that developers usually use some kind of template to create default layout of report, and most of all reporting systems supports creating these kind of templates including SSRS. Actually it is very easy to create a report template which can be used for all other reports.
In this “How To”, I am creating a basic report template for report which once finalized can be used for any future use.
First step is to fire up VS2008 and create new report server project. Then add an empty report in it. Next step is to modify report the way want in our template. For sake of simplicity, I am just adding some basic fields. But in reality, we can add number of things including company logo as images.
Once it is done, all you have to do is to browse to
FTP connection using BATCH file
Feb 10th
I really love DOS commands. They are so powerful and yet simple (most of the time). Few days back I was required to create a script to download files from FTP site to local folder, and this has to be done at scheduled time. I decided to use my all time favorite script language to do this job …. yes a batch file with dos commands, honestly it is not like that I am partial to batch file and dos commands (hmm, may be a little bit) but I personally find PowerShell a bit cryptic. And thus I try to avoid it’s use (plus our production servers don’t have PowerShell installed)
Ok, aside from my reasons for not using PowerShell, I was able to create a tiny script for my task. Script is very simple, it opens up a connection to ftp site. Provides user id and password. Selects FTP download directory (in this demo script it also selects file). And download it to local folder. And this is a simple TEXT file.
Strange installation size of MSFT tools
Jan 31st
I always prefer to use C drive only for OS and D drive for other installations. And I did the same thing when I installed Visual Studio on my machine. I installed it on D drive and when I tried to install newly downloaded LightSwitch from DreamSpark, I found that even the install directory is D, it uses loads of space on C drive as well !!
I just don’t understand the point of having thing on C. But I guess it is typical MSFT. Because I found same behavior when I installed SQL Server or Visual Studio in past. Only difference is this time I remembered to take screenshot of installation 
Infinite loop in DOS
Jan 27th
Few days back I was working on some task and as a part of that I was required to run some command line utility. Now condition was to keep running that utility all the time and for whatever reasons it crashes it should start by itself.
Now, I could do it by creating another application or service which monitors this utility all the time and if it crashes, this service or monitoring app restarts that utility. But I thought it is more work just for a simple task. Instead I chose a different and easy approach. I created a batch file that runs in infinite loop and made this utility run inside that loop. For sake of some history I also added a log for each restart event. And that’s it !!
I am posting my script below (of course it is not original script but it is nearly as original)
Logging in SSIS Package
Jan 19th
Logging is an essential part of any application. It gives user an insight of application operation. And it proves valuable in event of any issue. Same stands true for SSIS packages as well. Since SSIS package will get executed usually by SQL Server Agent or some Windows Scheduled Task and in both case it is usually unattended, having logger gets really helpful when all of a sudden you start receiving alerts that some files are not being processed.
For this post, I have create a very simple demo to show how logging works in SSIS. For this demo, I am using file system task to transfer file from one folder to another folder. And I have created a log file to record each step of this process.
First I have added a file system task. And then when you right click on control flow tab, it gives few options and first option is logging. By selecting this option, it will open up another window which is basically logging configuration wizard. Select objects of containers for which you want to create logging. In this case I wanted to log everything for whole package so I selected folder. If you click on “Provider Type” you should see different logging options available to log events in SSIS. And good thing is we can select multiple logging options, for example file based logging for simple operational steps and windows event logging for critical errors. For sake of simplicity (and I am feeling lazy to go into too deep) I have selected “SSIS Log provider for text files”. There is another tab next to “Providers and Logs”, “Details” which lets user select which events user want to log into logger. If you click on “Advanced” it will expand current window and will give more fine grain choices for logging.
Self Introduction in 3rd person in BLOG ?? Or it is actually written by another person ??
Jan 13th
Just like many people, internet is my another playground (after our backyard 
). I use google for many things, for work related stuff, to search cheap deal of computer hardware or just to find some crazy video. And every time I go to some personal blog or site, it always amazes me that why people like to like about them in 3rd person view ?? I mean come on, if it is my own blog then why the hack I will write about myself in 3rd person view ?? Unless I am just one of many poster of that blog and every author has their own bio written by some professional dude (which will be weird because … you blog because you want to write something not let others write for you, aren’t you ??) … I think it is totally OK to write bio in 3rd person view but when it is done by real 3rd person on his/her blog not yours.
I usually when find any blog, I try to find “About Me”. It is really entertaining to read those self posted 3re person bio. Some classic examples are, “S/He has XX years of experience in field of XYZ. And s/he is expert in XWYX technology.” Hell I have even seen some linkedIn profile like that !!
Anyways, I think me too can add something in 3rd person view,