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  • Read a text file and transfer contents to mysql database

    - by Jack Brown
    I need a php script to read a .txt file. The content of the text file are like this: data.txt 145|Joe Blogs|17/03/1954 986|Jim Smith|12/01/1976 234|Paul Jones|19/07/1923 098|James Smith|12/09/1998 234|Carl Jones|01/01/1925 These would then get stored into a database like this DataID |Name |DOB 234 |Carl Jones|01/01/1925 I would be so grateful if someone could give me script to achieve this.

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  • SQL Split function that handles string with delimeter appearing between text qualifiers?

    - by Ron
    There are several SQL split functions, from loop driven, to using xml commands, and even using a numbers table. I haven't found one that supports text qualifiers. Using the example string below, I would like to split on ",", but not when it appears between double or single quotes. Example data: [email protected], "Sally \"Heat\" Jones" <[email protected]>, "Mark Jones" <[email protected]>, "Stone, Ron" <[email protected]> Should return a table: [email protected] "Sally \"Heat\" Jones" <[email protected]> "Mark Jones" <[email protected]> "Stone, Ron" <[email protected]> I know this is a complex query/function, but any suggestions or any guidance would be mucho appreciated.

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  • How do I correctly organize output into columns?

    - by wrongusername
    The first thing that comes to my mind is to do a bunch of \t's, but that would cause words to be misaligned if any word is longer than any other word by a few characters. For example, I would like to have something like: Name Last Name Middle initial Bob Jones M Joe ReallyLongLastName T Instead, by including only "\t"'s in my cout statement I can only manage to get Name Last Name Middle initial Bob Jones M Joe ReallyLongLastName T or Name Last Name Middle initial Bob Jones M Joe ReallyLongLastName T What else would I need to do?

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  • Query that ignore the spaces.

    - by xRobot
    What's the best way to run a query so that spaces in the fields are ignored? For example the following queries.... SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE username = "JohnBobJones" SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE username = "John Bob Jones" . would find the following entries: John Bob Jones JohnBob Jones JohnBobJones . I am using php or python but I think this doesn't matter.

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  • regex search a mysql text column

    - by Ian
    Okay, I thought my head hurt with regular regex, but I can't seem to find what I'm looking for with regexp in mysql. I'm trying to look for situations in news articles where a Textile-formatted url has not ended with a slash so: "Catherine Zeta-Jones":/cr/catherinezeta-jones/ visited stack overflow is ok but "Catherine Zeta-Jones":/cr/catherinezeta-jones visited stack overflow is not. [just used Catherine as an example because I'm assuming an alpha search wouldn't catch the hyphen] One of these days I'll have to do that goat sacrifice so I can gain the proper knowledge of regex. Thanks everyone!

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  • MySQL Query GROUP_CONCAT Over Multiple Rows

    - by PeteGO
    I'm getting name and address data out of generic question / answer data to create some kind of normalised reporting database. The query I've got uses group_concat and works for individual sets of questions but not for multiple sets. I've tried to simplify what I'm doing by using just forename and surname and just 3 records, 2 for 1 person and 1 for another. In reality though there are more than 300,000 records. Example of results with qs.Id = 1. QuestionSetId Forename Surname ------------------------------------------------------- 1 Bob Jones Example of results with qs.Id IN (1, 2, 3). QuestionSetId Forename Surname ------------------------------------------------------- 3 Bob,Bob,Frank Jones,Jones,Smith What I would like to see for qs.Id IN (1, 2, 3). QuestionSetId Forename Surname ------------------------------------------------------- 1 Bob Jones 2 Bob Jones 3 Frank Smith So how can I make the 2nd example return a separate row for each set of name and address information? I realise the current way the data is stored is "questionable" but I cannot change the way the data is stored. I can get sets of individual answers but not sure how to combine the others. My simplified Schema that I cannot change: CREATE TABLE StaticQuestion ( Id INT NOT NULL, StaticText VARCHAR(500) NOT NULL); CREATE TABLE Question ( Id INT NOT NULL, Text VARCHAR(500) NOT NULL); CREATE TABLE StaticQuestionQuestionLink ( Id INT NOT NULL, StaticQuestionId INT NOT NULL, QuestionId INT NOT NULL, DateEffective DATETIME NOT NULL); CREATE TABLE Answer ( Id INT NOT NULL, Text VARCHAR(500) NOT NULL); CREATE TABLE QuestionSet ( Id INT NOT NULL, DateEffective DATETIME NOT NULL); CREATE TABLE QuestionAnswerLink ( Id INT NOT NULL, QuestionSetId INT NOT NULL, QuestionId INT NOT NULL, AnswerId INT NOT NULL, StaticQuestionId INT NOT NULL); Some example data for only forename and surname. INSERT INTO StaticQuestion (Id, StaticText) VALUES (1, 'FirstName'), (2, 'LastName'); INSERT INTO Question (Id, Text) VALUES (1, 'What is your first name?'), (2, 'What is your forename?'), (3, 'What is your Surname?'); INSERT INTO StaticQuestionQuestionLink (Id, StaticQuestionId, QuestionId, DateEffective) VALUES (1, 1, 1, '2001-01-01'), (2, 1, 2, '2008-08-08'), (3, 2, 3, '2001-01-01'); INSERT INTO Answer (Id, Text) VALUES (1, 'Bob'), (2, 'Jones'), (3, 'Bob'), (4, 'Jones'), (5, 'Frank'), (6, 'Smith'); INSERT INTO QuestionSet (Id, DateEffective) VALUES (1, '2002-03-25'), (2, '2009-05-05'), (3, '2009-08-06'); INSERT INTO QuestionAnswerLink (Id, QuestionSetId, QuestionId, AnswerId, StaticQuestionId) VALUES (1, 1, 1, 1, 1), (2, 1, 3, 2, 2), (3, 2, 2, 3, 1), (4, 2, 3, 4, 2), (5, 3, 2, 5, 1), (6, 3, 3, 6, 2); Just in case SQLFiddle is down here are the 3 queries from the examples I've linked to: 1: - working query but only on 1 set of data. SELECT MAX(QuestionSetId) AS QuestionSetId, GROUP_CONCAT(Forename) AS Forename, GROUP_CONCAT(Surname) AS Surname FROM (SELECT x.QuestionSetId, CASE x.StaticQuestionId WHEN 1 THEN Text END AS Forename, CASE x.StaticQuestionId WHEN 2 THEN Text END AS Surname FROM (SELECT (SELECT link.StaticQuestionId FROM StaticQuestionQuestionLink link WHERE link.Id = qa.QuestionId AND link.DateEffective <= qs.DateEffective AND link.StaticQuestionId IN (1, 2) ORDER BY link.DateEffective DESC LIMIT 1) AS StaticQuestionId, a.Text, qa.QuestionSetId FROM QuestionSet qs INNER JOIN QuestionAnswerLink qa ON qs.Id = qa.QuestionSetId INNER JOIN Answer a ON qa.AnswerId = a.Id WHERE qs.Id IN (1)) x) y 2: - working query but undesired results on multiple sets of data. SELECT MAX(QuestionSetId) AS QuestionSetId, GROUP_CONCAT(Forename) AS Forename, GROUP_CONCAT(Surname) AS Surname FROM (SELECT x.QuestionSetId, CASE x.StaticQuestionId WHEN 1 THEN Text END AS Forename, CASE x.StaticQuestionId WHEN 2 THEN Text END AS Surname FROM (SELECT (SELECT link.StaticQuestionId FROM StaticQuestionQuestionLink link WHERE link.Id = qa.QuestionId AND link.DateEffective <= qs.DateEffective AND link.StaticQuestionId IN (1, 2) ORDER BY link.DateEffective DESC LIMIT 1) AS StaticQuestionId, a.Text, qa.QuestionSetId FROM QuestionSet qs INNER JOIN QuestionAnswerLink qa ON qs.Id = qa.QuestionSetId INNER JOIN Answer a ON qa.AnswerId = a.Id WHERE qs.Id IN (1, 2, 3)) x) y 3: - working query on multiple sets of data only on 1 field (answer) though. SELECT qs.Id AS QuestionSet, a.Text AS Answer FROM QuestionSet qs INNER JOIN QuestionAnswerLink qalink ON qs.Id = qalink.QuestionSetId INNER JOIN StaticQuestionQuestionLink sqqlink ON qalink.QuestionId = sqqlink.QuestionId INNER JOIN Answer a ON qalink.AnswerId = a.Id WHERE sqqlink.StaticQuestionId = 1 /* FirstName */ AND sqqlink.DateEffective = (SELECT DateEffective FROM StaticQuestionQuestionLink WHERE StaticQuestionId = 1 AND DateEffective <= qs.DateEffective ORDER BY DateEffective DESC LIMIT 1)

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  • Lots of great stuff going on with Oracle Secure Global Desktop!

    - by Chris Kawalek
    You're probably familiar with Oracle Secure Global Desktop, our solution for providing secure, browser-based access to Oracle Applications and other enterprise software. It's a fantastic product and one I've been personally involved with for nearly a decade! I wanted to give you a quick update on all the fantastic things that are going on with it: First, we have done a few videos with Oracle's Mohan Prabhala at trade shows recently. You can get a quick product refresher and an update on the latest new features by watching these: Next, we talked at length with Brian Madden and Gabe Knuth on Brian and Gabe LIVE about Oracle Secure Global Desktop. Click here or on the screenshot below to go to the brianmadden.com video. Part 1 focuses on Oracle Secure Global Desktop. Listen toward the end for Brian to say, “I kinda want this actually at TechTarget right now.” The analysts are talking about us, too. When we released Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7, Chris Wolf over at Gartner had this to say on Twitter. Last, just a quick reminder for existing Oracle Applications customers that Oracle Secure Global Desktop is easy for you to leverage for secure application access. Oracle Secure Global desktop is certified for use with Oracle browser-based applications such as Primavera, E-Business Suite and with Exalogic. Steven Chan over at the E-Business Suite Technology blog gives a great explanation of how Oracle Secure Global Desktop works with E-Business Suite, as an example. As the title says, lots of great stuff going on! -Chris

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  • Two strange efficiency problems in Mathematica

    - by Jess Riedel
    FIRST PROBLEM I have timed how long it takes to compute the following statements (where V[x] is a time-intensive function call): Alice = Table[V[i],{i,1,300},{1000}]; Bob = Table[Table[V[i],{i,1,300}],{1000}]^tr; Chris_pre = Table[V[i],{i,1,300}]; Chris = Table[Chris_pre,{1000}]^tr; Alice, Bob, and Chris are identical matricies computed 3 slightly different ways. I find that Chris is computed 1000 times faster than Alice and Bob. It is not surprising that Alice is computed 1000 times slower because, naively, the function V must be called 1000 more times than when Chris is computed. But it is very surprising that Bob is so slow, since he is computed identically to Chris except that Chris stores the intermediate step Chris_pre. Why does Bob evaluate so slowly? SECOND PROBLEM Suppose I want to compile a function in Mathematica of the form f(x)=x+y where "y" is a constant fixed at compile time (but which I prefer not to directly replace in the code with its numerical because I want to be able to easily change it). If y's actual value is y=7.3, and I define f1=Compile[{x},x+y] f2=Compile[{x},x+7.3] then f1 runs 50% slower than f2. How do I make Mathematica replace "y" with "7.3" when f1 is compiled, so that f1 runs as fast as f2? Many thanks!

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  • Microsoft Seeks Feedback on SQL Server Denali

    Dan Jones Principal Program Manager of Microsoft s SQL Server Manageability team recently created a blog post asking for feedback on three topics concerning SQL Server Code Name Denali. The feedback is essential to Jones and the Microsoft team as it helps them see how they can tweak the Denali adoption process to better suit user needs.... Display the VeriSign seal And increase sales by an average of 24%. Start your trial today

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  • RTS Movement + Navigation + Destination

    - by Oliver Jones
    I'm looking into building my own simple RTS game, and I'm trying to get my head around the movement of single, and multi selected units. (Developing in Unity) After much research, I now know that its a bigger task than I thought. So I need to break it down. I already have an A* navigation system with static obstacles taken into account. I don't want to worry about dynamic local avoidance right now. So I guess my first break down question would be: How would I go about moving mutli units to the same location. Right now - my units move to the location, but because they're all told to go to the same location, they start to 'fight' over one another to get there. I think theres two paths to go down: 1) Give each individual unit a separate destination point that is close to the 'master' destination point - and get the units to move to that. 2) Group my selected units in a flock formation, and move that entire flock group towards the destination point. Question about each path: 1a) How can I go about finding a suitable destination point that is close to the master destination? What happens if there isn't a suitable destination point? 1b) Would this be more CPU heavy? As it has to compute a path for each unit? (40 unit count). 2a) Is this a good idea? Not giving the units themselves a destination, but instead the flock (which holds the units within). The units within the flock could then maintain a formation (local avoidance) - though, again local avoidance is not an issue at this current time. 2b) Not sure what results I would get if I have a flock of 5 units, or a flock of 40 units, as the radius would be greater - which might mess up my A* navigation system. In other words: A flock of 2 units will be able to move down an alleyway, but a flock of 40 wont. But my nav system won't take that into account. I would appreciate any feedback. Kind regards, Ollie Jones

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  • 30 in 60 Contest | Standings Update

    - by Staff of Geeks
    The contest has definitely ended the first week with a clear leader.  One of our new bloggers, Enrique Lima, has posted 20 times since the beginning of the contest with some great content on Team Foundation Server.  Another noticeable face we see on the leader board is Chris Williams who is making headway.  Chris, are you going to challenge up D’Arcy Lussier for the lead position on GWB again, notice who isn’t on this list :D.  Also, Chris House who is a new blogger is making some strong strides.  And finally, let us not forget Dave Campbell who writes Silverlight Cream who always has great content for us.  We hope to see more names joining this list soon, what else could be better than a world full of Geekswithblogs.net custom shirts?   Current Leader Board: Enrique Lima (20 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/enriquelima Eric Nelson (7 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable Christopher House (7 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/13DaysaWeek StuartBrierley (7 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/StuartBrierley Dave Campbell (6 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/WynApseTechnicalMusings Chris Williams (5 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams Frez (4 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/Frez MarkPearl (4 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/MarkPearl mbcrump (4 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/mbcrump Rajesh Charagandla (3 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/crajesh Technorati Tags: 30 in 60,Geekswithblogs,Standings

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  • Show #14 DotNetNuke 5.6.1, Razor/Webmatrix and WebCamps

    - by Chris Hammond
    Once again, it’s been far too long since the last show, this time just over 4 months, For Show #14 I am joined by Joe Brinkman. Take a listen and see what has been going on in the DNN world. Length: 47:56 Size: 43.8mb MP3 Download Welcome back to DNNVoice Welcome to guest Joe Brinkman ( http://blog.theaccidentalgeek.com/ ) Introduction to Joe and Welcome back from Chris Hammond ( http://www.chrishammond.com ) and what he's been doing DotNetNuke Training Free Extensions Module Development Templates...(read more)

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  • MIX 2010 recap podcast

    - by Chris Williams
    from www.slickthought.net: Spaghetti Code Podcast: Recapping the MIX Conference 4/2/2010 11:06:10 AM Spaghetti Code (Jeff Brand) is joined by Mike Hodnic, Jason Bock, Adam Grocholski and Chris Williams to share their thoughts and impressions from the Microsoft MIX Conference and their thoughts on Windows Phone, Silverlight 4, and more. Direct Download - click here Subscribe - click here iTunes - click here

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  • Long Running Service Request or COLD CASE?

    - by chris.warticki
    What's going on? Why is it taking so long? Is anyone out there? Resolving Service Requests can seem to take forever. If your Service Request is taking more than a few days, moving into weeks or months, here are few things to consider.  Details here.  Comments welcome. -Chris Warticki twittering @cwarticki Join one of the Twibes - http://twibes.com/OracleSupport or http://twibes.com/MyOracleSupport

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  • Oracle Linux Friday Spotlight - October 18, 2013

    - by Chris Kawalek
    Happy Friday! Echoing our popular series over on the Oracle Virtualization blog, we'll now be spotlighting something interesting about Oracle Linux for you every Friday. This week, we have a really cool video done by Intel that features Oracle's Phillip Goerl discussing the Oracle Linux development model and how it relates to Intel Xeon. Click below to jump to YouTube and play the video: See you next week! -Chris 

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  • Oracle Linux Friday Spotlight - November 1, 2013

    - by Chris Kawalek
    Happy Friday! I hope you were able to catch our webcast "Why Choose Oracle Linux for your Oracle Database 12c Deployments" earlier this week so you could ask questions of our experts in real-time. But if you didn't, or want to share the content with your colleagues, the on-demand version is our Friday Spotlight this week. Watch now: Why Choose Oracle Linux for your Oracle Database 12c Deployments We'll see you next week! -Chris

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  • Manchester UG Presentation Video

    In July I was invited to speak at the UK SQL Server UG event in Manchester.  I spoke about Excel being a good data mining client.  I was a little rushed at the end as Chris Testa-ONeill told me I had only 5 minutes to go when I had only been talking for 10 minutes.  Apparently I have a reputation for running over my time allocation.  At the event we also had a product demo from SQL Sentry around their BI monitoring dashboard solution.  This includes SSIS but the main thrust was SSAS Then came Chris with a look at Analysis Services.  If you have never heard Chris talk then take the opportunity now, he is a top class presenter and I am often found sat at the back of his classes. Here is the video link

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  • Manchester UG Presentation Video

    In July I was invited to speak at the UK SQL Server UG event in Manchester.  I spoke about Excel being a good data mining client.  I was a little rushed at the end as Chris Testa-ONeill told me I had only 5 minutes to go when I had only been talking for 10 minutes.  Apparently I have a reputation for running over my time allocation.  At the event we also had a product demo from SQL Sentry around their BI monitoring dashboard solution.  This includes SSIS but the main thrust was SSAS Then came Chris with a look at Analysis Services.  If you have never heard Chris talk then take the opportunity now, he is a top class presenter and I am often found sat at the back of his classes. Here is the video link

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  • Udacity: Teaching thousands of students to program online using App Engine

    Udacity: Teaching thousands of students to program online using App Engine Join Fred Sauer & Iein Valdez as they talk with Steve Huffman, founder of Reddit and Hipmunk, and Chris Chew, senior software engineer at Udacity. Steve will share his experience teaching a course on web development using App Engine at Udacity, and Chris will talk about his experience building Udacity itself using App Engine. Submit your questions for Steve and Chris to answer live on air. From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 0 0 ratings Time: 00:00 More in Science & Technology

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  • SVN Authz - Any Subfolder permission or List contents

    - by Jaspa Jones
    Goal Basically I would like SVN users to be able to browse through a directory containing a lot of subfolders without allowing them to read its subfolders. [/] * = r [/Projects] * = # Allow viewing contents, but not reading. At least to be able to see Project1. [/Projects/Project1] my_group = rw Problem The problem is that there are a lot of projects. I could add every other project and make them disappear for the user, but that would be a lot of work to maintain. It would look like this: [/] * = r [/Projects] * = r [/Projects/Project1] my_group = rw [/Projects/Project2] * = [/Projects/Project3] * = [/Projects/Project4] * = [/Projects/Project5] * = It would be nice if I could use this: [/Projects/*] * = Any ideas? Thanks in advance, Jaspa Jones

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  • Aggregating Excel cell contents that match a label [migrated]

    - by Josh
    I'm sure this isn't a terribly difficult thing, but it's not the type of question that easily lends itself to internet searches. I've been assigned a project for work involving a complex spreadsheet. I've done the usual =SUM and other basic Excel formulas, and I've got enough coding background that I'm able to at least fudge my way through VBA, but I'm not certain how to proceed with one part of the task. Simple version: On Sheet 1 I have a list of people (one on each row, person's name in column A), on sheet 2 I have a list of groups (one on each row, group name in column A). Each name in Sheet 1 has its own row, and I have a "Data Validation" dropdown menu where you choose the group each person belongs to. That dropdown is sourced from Sheet 2, where each group has a row. So essentially the data validation source for Sheet 1's "Group" column is just "=Sheet2!$a1:a100" or whatever. The problem is this: I want each group row in Sheet 2 to have a formula which results in a list of all the users which have been assigned to that group on Sheet 1. What I mean is something the equivalent of "select * from PeopleTab where GROUP = ThisGroup". The resulting cell would just stick the names together like "Bob Smith, Joe Jones, Sally Sanderson" I've been Googling for hours but I can't think of a way to phrase my search query to get the results I want. Here's an example of desired result (Dash-delimited. Can't find a way to make it look nice, table tags don't seem to work here): (Sheet 1) Bob Smith - Group 1 (selected from dropdown) Joe Jones - Group 2 (selected from dropdown) Sally Sanderson - Group 1 (selected from dropdown) (Sheet 2) Group 1 - Bob Smith, Sally Sanderson (result of formula) Group 2 - Joe Jones (result of formula) What formula (or even what function) do I use on that second column of sheet 2 to make a flat list out of the members of that group?

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  • Run-time error'9' subscript out of range

    - by Chris
    The error occurs when I rename the file. I need to be able to the macro automatically recognise the change in the file name and apply it to the macro. Is there any way to do this without having to manually change it each time which will no work for what I need this to do Sub OccurenceSort() ' ' OccurenceSort Macro ' Macro recorded 4/9/2010 by Chris Greenlee ' ' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+o ' Sheets("Occurences").Select Range("A1:D58").Select Range("D58").Activate Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("B2"), Order1:=xlDescending, Header:=xlGuess, _ OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom Sheets("Chart").Select ActiveSheet.ChartObjects("Chart 1").Activate ActiveChart.PlotArea.Select ActiveChart.ChartArea.Select ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1).Values = "=Occurences!R2C2:R12C2" End Sub Sub OccurenceByValue() ' ' OccurenceByValue Macro ' Macro recorded 4/9/2010 by Chris Greenlee ' ' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+v ' ActiveWindow.Visible = False Windows("QA Project - Automated Charts v1.1.xls").Activate Sheets("Occurences").Select Range("A1:D58").Select Range("D58").Activate Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("C2"), Order1:=xlDescending, Header:=xlGuess, _ OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom Sheets("Chart").Select ActiveSheet.ChartObjects("Chart 1").Activate ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1).Values = "=Occurences!R2C3:R12C3" End Sub Sub OccurencesByPercentIncreaseToScore() ' ' OccurencesByPercentIncreaseToScore Macro ' Macro recorded 4/9/2010 by Chris Greenlee ' ' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+p ' ActiveWindow.Visible = False Windows("QA Project - Automated Charts v1.1.xls").Activate Sheets("Occurences").Select Range("A1:D58").Select Range("D58").Activate Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("D2"), Order1:=xlDescending, Header:=xlGuess, _ OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom Sheets("Chart").Select ActiveSheet.ChartObjects("Chart 1").Activate ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1).Values = "=Occurences!R2C4:R12C4" End Sub The problem occurs with this line Windows("QA Project - Automated Charts v1.1.xls").Activate

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  • HTG Explains: Should You Build Your Own PC?

    - by Chris Hoffman
    There was a time when every geek seemed to build their own PC. While the masses bought eMachines and Compaqs, geeks built their own more powerful and reliable desktop machines for cheaper. But does this still make sense? Building your own PC still offers as much flexibility in component choice as it ever did, but prebuilt computers are available at extremely competitive prices. Building your own PC will no longer save you money in most cases. The Rise of Laptops It’s impossible to look at the decline of geeks building their own PCs without considering the rise of laptops. There was a time when everyone seemed to use desktops — laptops were more expensive and significantly slower in day-to-day tasks. With the diminishing importance of computing power — nearly every modern computer has more than enough power to surf the web and use typical programs like Microsoft Office without any trouble — and the rise of laptop availability at nearly every price point, most people are buying laptops instead of desktops. And, if you’re buying a laptop, you can’t really build your own. You can’t just buy a laptop case and start plugging components into it — even if you could, you would end up with an extremely bulky device. Ultimately, to consider building your own desktop PC, you have to actually want a desktop PC. Most people are better served by laptops. Benefits to PC Building The two main reasons to build your own PC have been component choice and saving money. Building your own PC allows you to choose all the specific components you want rather than have them chosen for you. You get to choose everything, including the PC’s case and cooling system. Want a huge case with room for a fancy water-cooling system? You probably want to build your own PC. In the past, this often allowed you to save money — you could get better deals by buying the components yourself and combining them, avoiding the PC manufacturer markup. You’d often even end up with better components — you could pick up a more powerful CPU that was easier to overclock and choose more reliable components so you wouldn’t have to put up with an unstable eMachine that crashed every day. PCs you build yourself are also likely more upgradable — a prebuilt PC may have a sealed case and be constructed in such a way to discourage you from tampering with the insides, while swapping components in and out is generally easier with a computer you’ve built on your own. If you want to upgrade your CPU or replace your graphics card, it’s a definite benefit. Downsides to Building Your Own PC It’s important to remember there are downsides to building your own PC, too. For one thing, it’s just more work — sure, if you know what you’re doing, building your own PC isn’t that hard. Even for a geek, researching the best components, price-matching, waiting for them all to arrive, and building the PC just takes longer. Warranty is a more pernicious problem. If you buy a prebuilt PC and it starts malfunctioning, you can contact the computer’s manufacturer and have them deal with it. You don’t need to worry about what’s wrong. If you build your own PC and it starts malfunctioning, you have to diagnose the problem yourself. What’s malfunctioning, the motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card, or power supply? Each component has a separate warranty through its manufacturer, so you’ll have to determine which component is malfunctioning before you can send it off for replacement. Should You Still Build Your Own PC? Let’s say you do want a desktop and are willing to consider building your own PC. First, bear in mind that PC manufacturers are buying in bulk and getting a better deal on each component. They also have to pay much less for a Windows license than the $120 or so it would cost you to to buy your own Windows license. This is all going to wipe out the cost savings you’ll see — with everything all told, you’ll probably spend more money building your own average desktop PC than you would picking one up from Amazon or the local electronics store. If you’re an average PC user that uses your desktop for the typical things, there’s no money to be saved from building your own PC. But maybe you’re looking for something higher end. Perhaps you want a high-end gaming PC with the fastest graphics card and CPU available. Perhaps you want to pick out each individual component and choose the exact components for your gaming rig. In this case, building your own PC may be a good option. As you start to look at more expensive, high-end PCs, you may start to see a price gap — but you may not. Let’s say you wanted to blow thousands of dollars on a gaming PC. If you’re looking at spending this kind of money, it would be worth comparing the cost of individual components versus a prebuilt gaming system. Still, the actual prices may surprise you. For example, if you wanted to upgrade Dell’s $2293 Alienware Aurora to include a second NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 graphics card, you’d pay an additional $600 on Alienware’s website. The same graphics card costs $650 on Amazon or Newegg, so you’d be spending more money building the system yourself. Why? Dell’s Alienware gets bulk discounts you can’t get — and this is Alienware, which was once regarded as selling ridiculously overpriced gaming PCs to people who wouldn’t build their own. Building your own PC still allows you to get the most freedom when choosing and combining components, but this is only valuable to a small niche of gamers and professional users — most people, even average gamers, would be fine going with a prebuilt system. If you’re an average person or even an average gamer, you’ll likely find that it’s cheaper to purchase a prebuilt PC rather than assemble your own. Even at the very high end, components may be more expensive separately than they are in a prebuilt PC. Enthusiasts who want to choose all the individual components for their dream gaming PC and want maximum flexibility may want to build their own PCs. Even then, building your own PC these days is more about flexibility and component choice than it is about saving money. In summary, you probably shouldn’t build your own PC. If you’re an enthusiast, you may want to — but only a small minority of people would actually benefit from building their own systems. Feel free to compare prices, but you may be surprised which is cheaper. Image Credit: Richard Jones on Flickr, elPadawan on Flickr, Richard Jones on Flickr     

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  • Unclaimed user group prizes, Live meeting on Monday, Next weeks UG, SQLRelay and more prizes

    - by Testas
      Hi Everyone Firstly I want to let you know that I finally found the LINQ book prize winners and the list of people at the bottom of this email are owed a LINQ book. This will be given out at next week’s UG meeting Live meeting with Carolyn Chau, Program Manager at Microsoft on Monday! It is very rare that we get the opportunity to have a Live meeting with a Program Manager in Redmond. Carolyn Chau will be presenting PowerView next Monday at 8pm. Live meeting details can be found on http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/388/Live-Meeting-on-SQL-Server-2012-PowerView-with-Carolyn-Chau-Principal-Program-Manager-in-the-Reporting-Services-in-association-with-SQLPASS-SQLServerFAQ-and-SQLBits.aspx Next week’s UG!! We welcome Mark Broadbent to Manchester next week where he will be presenting his session on SQL Server 2012 on Windows Core. We also hand out the unclaimed prizes. Register at http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/369/Thursday-night-meeting-at-BSS-with-Chris-TestaONeill-and-Mark-Broadbent.aspx Chris Webb is in Manchester!!! Chris Webb will be speaking at the Manchester SQL Server UG on 4th July. He will also be running his Real World Cube Design and Performance Tuning with Analysis Services between the 3rd – 5th July. If you want to attend then you can sign up at the link below http://www.technitrain.com/coursedetail.php?c=13&trackingcode=FAQ SQLRelay and a Special Prize and Jamie Thomson comes to Manchester!!!! SQLRelay takes place in Manchester on the 22nd. We have a special guest, after years of asking Jamie Thomson is coming to Manchester. The SSIS Junkie will be gracing us with his presence with a talk on SSIS 2012. Also we have a prize. Know a friend or colleague who would benefit from SQLRelay? Get them to register at www.sqlserverfaq.com and then register for the event http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/373/ALL-DAY-TUESDAY-EVENT-12-hours-of-SQL-Server-2012-at-the-SQLRelay-meeting-at-the-COOP-Manchester.aspx Then send an email to [email protected] with the subject of SQLFriend with the name of your friend. If you are both at the SQLRelay event on the day and your names are pulled out of the hat you will win a PASS 2011 DVD and your friend will win the “Best of PASS DVD 2011” worth  $1000 courtesy of SQLPASS. The draw will take place between 4.30pm – 5pm on the day. SQLBits feedback!!!!! Attended SQLBits? We really need to know your opinion. Please fill out the survey for the days you attended If you attended any of the days at SQLBits please can you all fill out the following survey http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsX If you attended the Thursday Training day then please fill out the following survey: http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsXThursday If you attended the Friday Deep Dives day then please fill out the following survey: http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsXFriday If you attended the Saturday Community day then please fill out the following survey: http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsXSaturday Thanks   Chris and Martin   LINQ BOOK winners Andrew Birds Chris Kennedy Dave Carpenter David Forrester Ian Ringrose James Cullen James Simpson Kevan Riley Kirsty Hunter Martin Bell Martin Croft Michael Docherty Naga Anand Ram Mangipudi Neal Atkinson Nick Colebourn Pavel Nefyodov Ralph Baines Rick Hibbert saad saleh Simon Enion Stan Venn Steve Powell Stuart Quinn

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  • How do you educate your teammates without seeming condescending or superior?

    - by Dan Tao
    I work with three other guys; I'll call them Adam, Brian, and Chris. Adam and Brian are bright guys. Give them a problem; they will figure out a way to solve it. When it comes to OOP, though, they know very little about it and aren't particularly interested in learning. Pure procedural code is their MO. Chris, on the other hand, is an OOP guy all the way -- and a cocky, condescending one at that. He is constantly criticizing the work Adam and Brian do and talking to me as if I must share his disdain for the two of them. When I say that Adam and Brian aren't interested in learning about OOP, I suspect Chris is the primary reason. This hasn't bothered me too much for the most part, but there have been times when, looking at some code Adam or Brian wrote, it has pained me to think about how a problem could have been solved so simply using inheritance or some other OOP concept instead of the unmaintainable mess of 1,000 lines of code that ended up being written instead. And now that the company is starting a rather ambitious new project, with Adam assigned to the task of getting the core functionality in place, I fear the result. Really, I just want to help these guys out. But I know that if I come across as just another holier-than-thou developer like Chris, it's going to be massively counterproductive. I've considered: Team code reviews -- everybody reviews everybody's code. This way no one person is really in a position to look down on anyone else; besides, I know I could learn plenty from the other members on the team as well. But this would be time-consuming, and with such a small team, I have trouble picturing it gaining much traction as a team practice. Periodic e-mails to the team -- this would entail me sending out an e-mail every now and then discussing some concept that, based on my observation, at least one team member would benefit from learning about. The downside to this approach is I do think it could easily make me come across as a self-appointed expert. Keeping a blog -- I already do this, actually; but so far my blog has been more about esoteric little programming tidbits than straightforward practical advice. And anyway, I suspect it would get old pretty fast if I were constantly telling my coworkers, "Hey guys, remember to check out my new blog post!" This question doesn't need to be specifically about OOP or any particular programming paradigm or technology. I just want to know: how have you found success in teaching new concepts to your coworkers without seeming like a condescending know-it-all? It's pretty clear to me there isn't going to be a sure-fire answer, but any helpful advice (including methods that have worked as well as those that have proved ineffective or even backfired) would be greatly appreciated. UPDATE: I am not the Team Lead on this team. Chris is. UPDATE 2: Made community wiki to accord with the general sentiment of the community (fancy that).

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