Things I did not know about India

Visiting Bengaluru in India I found there were things I did not know about India. I found India is tougher (more frequent) on emission standards than USA. Here are some I did not know about. I may add to this list......

• I did not know that they do emission testing for cars every six months
• I did not know that they do emission testing every 3 months for two wheelers and three wheelers
• I did not know by constitution you have a choice of not casting your vote to any candidate if you so wish as, "I do not want to vote for anyone on this poll as no one in my opinion is good" is one of the choices.
• I did not now that gas prices can be set as odd as Rs 15.32 per liter. [While Rs 0.3 is worthless what good is there in going to the next decimal place].
• I did not know that selection of students to top technical / medical colleges has become very transparent (no influence peddling)
• I did not know that there is a constitution backed PCPNDT act in India which makes it illegal to determine the sex in prenatal diagnostics.
• I did not know that most traffic signals derive their power from Solar panels.
• I did not know...

Bringing to you a new video tutorial on Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services

I confess this is my first video tutorial and it is made possible by an evaluation
copy of Adobe's Captivate. Adobe Captivate is an easy to use program.

The video describes fully, in a matter of 10 minutes the SSIS 2005 IDE. SSIS 2008
is almost similar to SSIS 2005 in most respects. The IDE is described in even fuller detail
in my book on integration services, 'Beginners guide to Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services 2005'
published by Packt Publishers in UK.

Video: Visual Studio 2005 IDE for SQL Server Integration Services


Watch this video on the SSWUG.org site and update your knowledge about this important product from Microsoft. You may watch this video for free by regstering as a guest.

Extremely promising High performance 'Lithium Air Battery' Development in Japan

A February 2009 report by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) describes a new type of Lithium Air battery, the salient features of which are as follows:

• The lithium air battery uses a combination of aqueous and organic based electrolytes

•  Has achieved a capacity of 50000mAh/g based on an air electrode

• The lithium fuel battery is comprised of using lithium metal in the form of cassettes or other forms

Here is a schematic of the battery from their publication and a chart showing its performance.

Figure 1: Schematic of the battery

Figure 2: Performance of the battery being developed

The author of this blog is responsible for the translation of figure details and is grateful to the public relations department of The Naional Institute of Advnaced Industrial Science and Technology for the use of the notes and figures (Figures 1 and 2).

My problem with VS2010 Beta was due to a bug

Microsoft recently provided a link to fix the problem in response to my Connect feedback:

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=481884&wa=wsignin1.0

This appears to be a bug which will be corrected in Visual Studio Beta2 (date tbd).

The following preventative measure is provided in this KB article from Microsoft. Thank you Microsoft for following up the connect feedback.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2001109

The problem is summarized here:

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2009/08/problems-installing-microsoft-visual.html

You should give credit to the web site or the article author

This post has been removed.

Microsoft Jet or MSDASQL for Linked Servers?

In SQL Server 2008 you can create linked servers with a variety of data sources as seen in this figure. Linked Servers are created using OLE DB technology and there are two possible ways that
you can connect to MS Access, using Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0 or MSDASQL.

The connection strings for these are:

[oledb]
; Everything after this line is an OLE DB initstring
Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\SAMPLES\Northwind.mdb;Persist Security Info=False


[oledb]
; Everything after this line is an OLE DB initstring
Provider=MSDASQL.1;Persist Security Info=False;Data Source=FromAccess

Now which is better for a linked server? You will find the answer to this in the following article brought to you by SSWUG.ORG. This is site where you subscribe, but you can register as a guest to view this article.

Microsoft Access 2003 Linked Server on SQL Server 2008 using the JET and MSDASQL Providers

Problems installing Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2010

Installing this software (humongous) has been very challenging. Take for example the following which I removed completly from my Windows 7 RC by restoring the system to the earliest date (When windows 7 RC was installed for the first time) since it did not work.

Tried to install  once again after restoring, the program stopped as seen here,

Here is the Setup failed messaage,

Here is the wasted time and effort downloading (hours) of programs

The installation program might have sent what went wrong to Microsoft perhaps a dozen times. I have posted the problems to the appropriate forums after each such trial, but no positive answers so far.

Well, Windows 7 itself is in RC and on top of this another beta. It is really getting out of hand.
 
Looks like I am not the only with the problems,
 

 
 

MySQL Linked Server

Linking servers provides an easy solution when you are faced with running queries against databases on distributed servers or looking at your distributed assets on disparate databases.


This article (brought to you by Packt Publishing Inc.) explains how to set up a MySQL linked server on SQL Server 2008 Enterprise. Configuring a linked MySQL server as well as querying a table on the MySQL linked server is described. The reader would benefit reviewing the first article on this series on MySQL Servers.

MySQL Linked Server on SQL Server 2008

Web enabling MySQL Data

Web enabling business data is one of the key devices used to advertise and market products. This can be done with various technologies such as VB, ASP, JSP, ASP.Net and many others. This article shows how you may view data from a table in a database on a MySQL database server on a web page.

This article is brought to you by Packt Publishing Inc.

Displaying MySQL data on an ASP.NET Web Page

Am I missing an Indian Language here?

Microsoft has a big stake in India. Microsoft has lotsa software workers of Indian origin. How come I cannot see any Indian Language here?