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  • How do I overflow text to the left in a table?

    - by remack
    I have a table with fixed layout. On overflow, the contents of cells should clip from the left instead of the right. That is, if the width of the TD is less than the width of the text, the cell below should display "67890" instead of "12345". This needs to work in IE7+ at minimum. Is there a way to do this in css without any JavaScript? <table style="table-layout:fixed"> <tr> <TD> 12334567890 </TD> </tr> </table>

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  • how to force drupal function to not use DB cache?

    - by Alaa
    Hi All, i have a module and i am using node_load(array('nid' = arg(1))); now the problem is that this function keep getting its data for node_load from DB cache. how can i force this function to not use DB cache? Example my link is http://mydomain.com/node/344983 now: $node=node_load(array('nid'=arg(1)),null,true); echo $node-nid; output 435632 which is a randomly node id (available on the system) and everytime i ctrl+F5 my browser i get new nid!! Thanks for your help

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  • Java ORM related question - SQL Vs Google DB (Big Table?) GAE

    - by StackerFlow
    I was wondering about the following two options when one is not using SQL tables but ORM based DBs (Example - when you are using GAE) Would the second option be less efficient? Requirement: There is an object. The object has a collection of similar items. I need to store this object. Example, say the object is a tree and it has a collection of leaves. Option 1: Traditional SQL type structure: Table for the Tree (with TreeId as the identifier for a row in the Table.) Table for the Leaves (where each leaf has a TreeId and to show the leaves of a tree, I query all leaves where the TreeId is the Id of the tree.) Here, the Tree structure DOES NOT have a field with leaves. Option 2: ORM / GAE Tables: Using the same example above, I have an object for Tree where the object has a collection (Set/List in Java/C++) of leaves. I store and retrieve the Tree together with the leaves (as the leaves are implemented as a Set in the Tree object) My question is, will the second one be less efficient that the first option? If so, why? Are there other alternatives? Thank you!

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  • How to make a staging table in ms sql 2005?

    - by chobo2
    Hi I heard about doing staging tables and I am wondering how you actually do it. I want to do a sqlbulk copy into a staging table. Then then update the real table. I heard in mssql 2008 that you can use something called merge but I am using ms sql 2005 so I heard I have to use a update inner join? I am not sure how that would look like(I am guessing best way would be to write it in SP). Also the staging table needs to be able to handle concurrent updates. I was thinking of putting another column in the staged as GUID so that way I know which records belong to which group and when it is time to delete the records from the staged table I can just use that. So can anyone show me any examples or tutorials on how to do it? Also how fast is this way? Say if your updating 50,000 records how long would that take(a guesstimate is fine)

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  • Please explain this delete top 100 SQL syntax

    - by Patrick
    Basically I want to do this: delete top( 100 ) from table order by id asc but MS SQL doesn't allow order in this position The common solution seems to be this: DELETE table WHERE id IN(SELECT TOP (100) id FROM table ORDER BY id asc) But I also found this method here: delete table from (select top (100) * from table order by id asc) table which has a much better estimated execution plan (74:26). Unfortunately I don't really understand the syntax, please can some one explain it to me? Always interested in any other methods to achieve the same result as well. EDIT: I'm still not getting it I'm afraid, I want to be able to read the query as I read the first two which are practically English. The above queries to me are: delete the top 100 records from table, with the records ordered by id ascending delete the top 100 records from table where id is anyone of (this lot of ids) delete table from (this lot of records) table I can't change the third one into a logical English sentence... I guess what I'm trying to get at is how does this turn into "delete from table (this lot of records)". The 'from' seems to be in an illogical position and the second mention of 'table' is logically superfluous (to me).

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  • How to design a database where the main entity table has 25+ columns but a single entity's columns g

    - by thenextwebguy
    The entities to be stored have 25+ properties (table columns). The entities are pretty diverse, meaning that, most of the columns are empty. On average, I'd say, less than 20% (<5) properties have a value in any particular item. So, I have a lot of redundant empty columns for most of the table rows. Almost all of the columns are decimal numbers. Given this scenario, would you suggest serializing the columns instead, or perhaps, create another table named "Property", which would contain all the possible properties and then creating yet another table "EntityProperty" which would map an property to an entity using foreign keys? Or would you leave it as it is?

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  • SQL SERVER – Get All the Information of Database using sys.databases

    - by pinaldave
    Earlier I wrote blog article SQL SERVER – Finding Last Backup Time for All Database. In the response of this article I have received very interesting script from SQL Server Expert Matteo as a comment in the blog. He has written script using sys.databases which provides plenty of the information about database. I suggest you can run this on your database and know unknown of your databases as well. SELECT database_id, CONVERT(VARCHAR(25), DB.name) AS dbName, CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), DATABASEPROPERTYEX(name, 'status')) AS [Status], state_desc, (SELECT COUNT(1) FROM sys.master_files WHERE DB_NAME(database_id) = DB.name AND type_desc = 'rows') AS DataFiles, (SELECT SUM((size*8)/1024) FROM sys.master_files WHERE DB_NAME(database_id) = DB.name AND type_desc = 'rows') AS [Data MB], (SELECT COUNT(1) FROM sys.master_files WHERE DB_NAME(database_id) = DB.name AND type_desc = 'log') AS LogFiles, (SELECT SUM((size*8)/1024) FROM sys.master_files WHERE DB_NAME(database_id) = DB.name AND type_desc = 'log') AS [Log MB], user_access_desc AS [User access], recovery_model_desc AS [Recovery model], CASE compatibility_level WHEN 60 THEN '60 (SQL Server 6.0)' WHEN 65 THEN '65 (SQL Server 6.5)' WHEN 70 THEN '70 (SQL Server 7.0)' WHEN 80 THEN '80 (SQL Server 2000)' WHEN 90 THEN '90 (SQL Server 2005)' WHEN 100 THEN '100 (SQL Server 2008)' END AS [compatibility level], CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), create_date, 103) + ' ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), create_date, 108) AS [Creation date], -- last backup ISNULL((SELECT TOP 1 CASE TYPE WHEN 'D' THEN 'Full' WHEN 'I' THEN 'Differential' WHEN 'L' THEN 'Transaction log' END + ' – ' + LTRIM(ISNULL(STR(ABS(DATEDIFF(DAY, GETDATE(),Backup_finish_date))) + ' days ago', 'NEVER')) + ' – ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), backup_start_date, 103) + ' ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), backup_start_date, 108) + ' – ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), backup_finish_date, 103) + ' ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), backup_finish_date, 108) + ' (' + CAST(DATEDIFF(second, BK.backup_start_date, BK.backup_finish_date) AS VARCHAR(4)) + ' ' + 'seconds)' FROM msdb..backupset BK WHERE BK.database_name = DB.name ORDER BY backup_set_id DESC),'-') AS [Last backup], CASE WHEN is_fulltext_enabled = 1 THEN 'Fulltext enabled' ELSE '' END AS [fulltext], CASE WHEN is_auto_close_on = 1 THEN 'autoclose' ELSE '' END AS [autoclose], page_verify_option_desc AS [page verify option], CASE WHEN is_read_only = 1 THEN 'read only' ELSE '' END AS [read only], CASE WHEN is_auto_shrink_on = 1 THEN 'autoshrink' ELSE '' END AS [autoshrink], CASE WHEN is_auto_create_stats_on = 1 THEN 'auto create statistics' ELSE '' END AS [auto create statistics], CASE WHEN is_auto_update_stats_on = 1 THEN 'auto update statistics' ELSE '' END AS [auto update statistics], CASE WHEN is_in_standby = 1 THEN 'standby' ELSE '' END AS [standby], CASE WHEN is_cleanly_shutdown = 1 THEN 'cleanly shutdown' ELSE '' END AS [cleanly shutdown] FROM sys.databases DB ORDER BY dbName, [Last backup] DESC, NAME Please let me know if you find this information useful. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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  • Package manager borked with gforge

    - by Leif Andersen
    I've been having a problem with the package manager. I seemed to have installed gforge, partially, but it keeps giving me errors whenever I install something. (Note that the thing I'm trying to install actually does get installed, but there is always an error returned). Here it is: Creating /etc/gforge/httpd.conf Creating /etc/gforge/httpd.secrets Creating /etc/gforge/local.inc Creating other includes invoke-rc.d: unknown initscript, /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.4 not found. dpkg: error processing gforge-db-postgresql (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 100 Errors were encountered while processing: gforge-db-postgresql E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) When I try to remove it with: sudo apt-get purge gforge-common I get this: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: gforge-common* gforge-db-postgresql* 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 9 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed. After this operation, 5,853kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? (Reading database ... 717305 files and directories currently installed.) Removing gforge-db-postgresql ... Replacing config file /etc/postgresql/8.4/main/pg_hba.conf with new version invoke-rc.d: unknown initscript, /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.4 not found. dpkg: error processing gforge-db-postgresql (--purge): subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 100 Removing gforge-common ... Purging configuration files for gforge-common ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Errors were encountered while processing: gforge-db-postgresql E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) And it complains until I do a: sudo apt-get install -f At which point gforge is re-installed. I'm out of ideas, does anyone else have any other ideas with what might be wrong, and more importantly, how I can fix it? Thank you.

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  • Returning Identity Value in SQL Server: @@IDENTITY Vs SCOPE_IDENTITY Vs IDENT_CURRENT

    - by Arefin Ali
    We have some common misconceptions on returning the last inserted identity value from tables. To return the last inserted identity value we have options to use @@IDENTITY or SCOPE_IDENTITY or IDENT_CURRENT function depending on the requirement but it will be a real mess if anybody uses anyone of these functions without knowing exact purpose. So here I want to share my thoughts on this. @@IDENTITY, SCOPE_IDENTITY and IDENT_CURRENT are almost similar functions in terms of returning identity value. They all return values that are inserted into an identity column. Earlier in SQL Server 7 we used to use @@IDENTITY to return the last inserted identity value because those days we don’t have functions like SCOPE_IDENTITY or IDENT_CURRENT but now we have these three functions. So let’s check out which one responsible for what. IDENT_CURRENT returns the last inserted identity value in a particular table. It never depends on a connection or the scope of the insert statement. IDENT_CURRENT function takes a table name as parameter. Here is the syntax to get the last inserted identity value in a particular table using IDENT_CURRENT function. SELECT IDENT_CURRENT('Employee') Both the @@IDENTITY and SCOPE_IDENTITY return the last inserted identity value created in any table in the current session. But there is little difference between these two i.e. SCOPE_IDENTITY returns value inserted only within the current scope whereas @@IDENTITY is not limited to any particular scope. Here are the syntaxes to get the last inserted identity value using these functions SELECT @@IDENTITY SELECT SCOPE_IDENTITY() Now let’s have a look at the following example. Suppose I have two tables called Employee and EmployeeLog. CREATE TABLE Employee ( EmpId NUMERIC(18, 0) IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, EmpName VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, EmpSal FLOAT NOT NULL, DateOfJoining DATETIME NOT NULL DEFAULT(GETDATE()) ) CREATE TABLE EmployeeLog ( EmpId NUMERIC(18, 0) IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, EmpName VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, EmpSal FLOAT NOT NULL, DateOfJoining DATETIME NOT NULL DEFAULT(GETDATE()) ) I have an insert trigger defined on the table Employee which inserts a new record in the EmployeeLog whenever a record insert in the Employee table. So Suppose I insert a new record in the Employee table using following statement: INSERT INTO Employee (EmpName,EmpSal) VALUES ('Arefin','1') The trigger will be fired automatically and insert a record in EmployeeLog. Here the scope of the insert statement and the trigger are different. In this situation if I retrieve last inserted identity value using @@IDENTITY, it will simply return the identity value from the EmployeeLog because it’s not limited to a particular scope. Now if I want to get the Employee table’s identity value then I need to use SCOPE_IDENTITY in this scenario. So the moral is always use SCOPE_IDENTITY to return the identity value of a recently created record in a sql statement or stored procedure. It’s safe and ensures bug free code.

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  • Returning Identity Value in SQL Server: @@IDENTITY Vs SCOPE_IDENTITY Vs IDENT_CURRENT

    - by Arefin Ali
    We have some common misconceptions on returning the last inserted identity value from tables. To return the last inserted identity value we have options to use @@IDENTITY or SCOPE_IDENTITY or IDENT_CURRENT function depending on the requirement but it will be a real mess if anybody uses anyone of these functions without knowing exact purpose. So here I want to share my thoughts on this. @@IDENTITY, SCOPE_IDENTITY and IDENT_CURRENT are almost similar functions in terms of returning identity value. They all return values that are inserted into an identity column. Earlier in SQL Server 7 we used to use @@IDENTITY to return the last inserted identity value because those days we don’t have functions like SCOPE_IDENTITY or IDENT_CURRENT but now we have these three functions. So let’s check out which one responsible for what. IDENT_CURRENT returns the last inserted identity value in a particular table. It never depends on a connection or the scope of the insert statement. IDENT_CURRENT function takes a table name as parameter. Here is the syntax to get the last inserted identity value in a particular table using IDENT_CURRENT function. SELECT IDENT_CURRENT('Employee') Both the @@IDENTITY and SCOPE_IDENTITY return the last inserted identity value created in any table in the current session. But there is little difference between these two i.e. SCOPE_IDENTITY returns value inserted only within the current scope whereas @@IDENTITY is not limited to any particular scope. Here are the syntaxes to get the last inserted identity value using these functions SELECT @@IDENTITYSELECT SCOPE_IDENTITY() Now let’s have a look at the following example. Suppose I have two tables called Employee and EmployeeLog. CREATE TABLE Employee( EmpId NUMERIC(18, 0) IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, EmpName VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, EmpSal FLOAT NOT NULL, DateOfJoining DATETIME NOT NULL DEFAULT(GETDATE()))CREATE TABLE EmployeeLog( EmpId NUMERIC(18, 0) IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, EmpName VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, EmpSal FLOAT NOT NULL, DateOfJoining DATETIME NOT NULL DEFAULT(GETDATE())) I have an insert trigger defined on the table Employee which inserts a new record in the EmployeeLog whenever a record insert in the Employee table. So Suppose I insert a new record in the Employee table using following statement: INSERT INTO Employee (EmpName,EmpSal) VALUES ('Arefin','1') The trigger will be fired automatically and insert a record in EmployeeLog. Here the scope of the insert statement and the trigger are different. In this situation if I retrieve last inserted identity value using @@IDENTITY, it will simply return the identity value from the EmployeeLog because it’s not limited to a particular scope. Now if I want to get the Employee table’s identity value then I need to use SCOPE_IDENTITY in this scenario. So the moral is always use SCOPE_IDENTITY to return the identity value of a recently created record in a sql statement or stored procedure. It’s safe and ensures bug free code.

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  • Change Tracking

    - by Ricardo Peres
    You may recall my last post on Change Data Control. This time I am going to talk about other option for tracking changes to tables on SQL Server: Change Tracking. The main differences between the two are: Change Tracking works with SQL Server 2008 Express Change Tracking does not require SQL Server Agent to be running Change Tracking does not keep the old values in case of an UPDATE or DELETE Change Data Capture uses an asynchronous process, so there is no overhead on each operation Change Data Capture requires more storage and processing Here's some code that illustrates it's usage: -- for demonstrative purposes, table Post of database Blog only contains two columns, PostId and Title -- enable change tracking for database Blog, for 2 days ALTER DATABASE Blog SET CHANGE_TRACKING = ON (CHANGE_RETENTION = 2 DAYS, AUTO_CLEANUP = ON); -- enable change tracking for table Post ALTER TABLE Post ENABLE CHANGE_TRACKING WITH (TRACK_COLUMNS_UPDATED = ON); -- see current records on table Post SELECT * FROM Post SELECT * FROM sys.sysobjects WHERE name = 'Post' SELECT * FROM sys.sysdatabases WHERE name = 'Blog' -- confirm that table Post and database Blog are being change tracked SELECT * FROM sys.change_tracking_tables SELECT * FROM sys.change_tracking_databases -- see current version for table Post SELECT p.PostId, p.Title, c.SYS_CHANGE_VERSION, c.SYS_CHANGE_CONTEXT FROM Post AS p CROSS APPLY CHANGETABLE(VERSION Post, (PostId), (p.PostId)) AS c; -- update post UPDATE Post SET Title = 'First Post Title Changed' WHERE Title = 'First Post Title'; -- see current version for table Post SELECT p.PostId, p.Title, c.SYS_CHANGE_VERSION, c.SYS_CHANGE_CONTEXT FROM Post AS p CROSS APPLY CHANGETABLE(VERSION Post, (PostId), (p.PostId)) AS c; -- see changes since version 0 (initial) SELECT p.Title, c.PostId, SYS_CHANGE_VERSION, SYS_CHANGE_OPERATION, SYS_CHANGE_COLUMNS, SYS_CHANGE_CONTEXT FROM CHANGETABLE(CHANGES Post, 0) AS c LEFT OUTER JOIN Post AS p ON p.PostId = c.PostId; -- is column Title of table Post changed since version 0? SELECT CHANGE_TRACKING_IS_COLUMN_IN_MASK(COLUMNPROPERTY(OBJECT_ID('Post'), 'Title', 'ColumnId'), (SELECT SYS_CHANGE_COLUMNS FROM CHANGETABLE(CHANGES Post, 0) AS c)) -- get current version SELECT CHANGE_TRACKING_CURRENT_VERSION() -- disable change tracking for table Post ALTER TABLE Post DISABLE CHANGE_TRACKING; -- disable change tracking for database Blog ALTER DATABASE Blog SET CHANGE_TRACKING = OFF; You can read about the differences between the two options here. Choose the one that best suits your needs! SyntaxHighlighter.config.clipboardSwf = 'http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.0.320/scripts/clipboard.swf'; SyntaxHighlighter.brushes.CSharp.aliases = ['c#', 'c-sharp', 'csharp']; SyntaxHighlighter.brushes.Xml.aliases = ['xml']; SyntaxHighlighter.all();

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  • T-SQL Dynamic SQL and Temp Tables

    - by George
    It looks like #temptables created using dynamic SQL via the EXECUTE string method have a different scope and can't be referenced by "fixed" SQLs in the same stored procedure. However, I can reference a temp table created by a dynamic SQL statement in a subsequence dynamic SQL but it seems that a stored procedure does not return a query result to a calling client unless the SQL is fixed. A simple 2 table scenario: I have 2 tables. Let's call them Orders and Items. Order has a Primary key of OrderId and Items has a Primary Key of ItemId. Items.OrderId is the foreign key to identify the parent Order. An Order can have 1 to n Items. I want to be able to provide a very flexible "query builder" type interface to the user to allow the user to select what Items he want to see. The filter criteria can be based on fields from the Items table and/or from the parent Order table. If an Item meets the filter condition including and condition on the parent Order if one exists, the Item should be return in the query as well as the parent Order. Usually, I suppose, most people would construct a join between the Item table and the parent Order tables. I would like to perform 2 separate queries instead. One to return all of the qualifying Items and the other to return all of the distinct parent Orders. The reason is two fold and you may or may not agree. The first reason is that I need to query all of the columns in the parent Order table and if I did a single query to join the Orders table to the Items table, I would be repoeating the Order information multiple times. Since there are typically a large number of items per Order, I'd like to avoid this because it would result in much more data being transfered to a fat client. Instead, as mentioned, I would like to return the two tables individually in a dataset and use the two tables within to populate a custom Order and child Items client objects. (I don't know enough about LINQ or Entity Framework yet. I build my objects by hand). The second reason I would like to return two tables instead of one is because I already have another procedure that returns all of the Items for a given OrderId along with the parent Order and I would like to use the same 2-table approach so that I could reuse the client code to populate my custom Order and Client objects from the 2 datatables returned. What I was hoping to do was this: Construct a dynamic SQL string on the Client which joins the orders table to the Items table and filters appropriate on each table as specified by the custom filter created on the Winform fat-client app. The SQL build on the client would have looked something like this: TempSQL = " INSERT INTO #ItemsToQuery OrderId, ItemsId FROM Orders, Items WHERE Orders.OrderID = Items.OrderId AND /* Some unpredictable Order filters go here */ AND /* Some unpredictable Items filters go here */ " Then, I would call a stored procedure, CREATE PROCEDURE GetItemsAndOrders(@tempSql as text) Execute (@tempSQL) --to create the #ItemsToQuery table SELECT * FROM Items WHERE Items.ItemId IN (SELECT ItemId FROM #ItemsToQuery) SELECT * FROM Orders WHERE Orders.OrderId IN (SELECT DISTINCT OrderId FROM #ItemsToQuery) The problem with this approach is that #ItemsToQuery table, since it was created by dynamic SQL, is inaccessible from the following 2 static SQLs and if I change the static SQLs to dynamic, no results are passed back to the fat client. 3 around come to mind but I'm look for a better one: 1) The first SQL could be performed by executing the dynamically constructed SQL from the client. The results could then be passed as a table to a modified version of the above stored procedure. I am familiar with passing table data as XML. If I did this, the stored proc could then insert the data into a temporary table using a static SQL that, because it was created by dynamic SQL, could then be queried without issue. (I could also investigate into passing the new Table type param instead of XML.) However, I would like to avoid passing up potentially large lists to a stored procedure. 2) I could perform all the queries from the client. The first would be something like this: SELECT Items.* FROM Orders, Items WHERE Order.OrderId = Items.OrderId AND (dynamic filter) SELECT Orders.* FROM Orders, Items WHERE Order.OrderId = Items.OrderId AND (dynamic filter) This still provides me with the ability to reuse my client sided object-population code because the Orders and Items continue to be returned in two different tables. I have a feeling to, that I might have some options using a Table data type within my stored proc, but that is also new to me and I would appreciate a little bit of spoon feeding on that one. If you even scanned this far in what I wrote, I am surprised, but if so, I woul dappreciate any of your thoughts on how to accomplish this best.

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  • DataTables warning (table id = 'example-advanced'): Cannot reinitialise DataTable while using treetable and datatable at the same time

    - by Nyaro
    DataTables warning (table id = 'example-advanced'): Cannot reinitialise DataTable while using treetable and datatable at the same time. Here is my code: <script src="jquery-1.7.2.min.js"></script> <script src='jquery.dataTables.min.js'></script> <script src="jquery.treetable.js"></script> <script> $("#example-advanced").treetable({ expandable: true }); </script> <script> $('#example-advanced').dataTable( { "bSort": false } ); </script> Actually I wanted to get rid of the sorting part of the datatable coz it was giving error in treetable display so i want the sorting part from the datatable out and keep other functions like search and pagination. Please help me out. Thanks in advance.

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  • Why does max-width behave counter intuitively on columns in a table? [migrated]

    - by Nate
    Basically, I have a stretchy table, I want my label column to be fixed width and my data column to be dynamically sized. My inclination would be to set the max-width via CSS on my label column. However, this has the opposite effect. I've created a jsfiddle that replicates this. (Re-size the window to see the left column dynamically sized and the right column fixed size) On my own site, I see the same behavior and it happens in IE and Chrome. If I switch it, and set max-width on the data column, everything behaves as I want, but it feels backwards to me. Am I doing something wrong here?

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  • What should you bring to the table as a Software Architect?

    - by Ahmad Mageed
    There have been many questions with good answers about the role of a Software Architect (SA) on StackOverflow and Programmers SE. I am trying to ask a slightly more focused question than those. The very definition of a SA is broad so for the sake of this question let's define a SA as follows: A Software Architect guides the overall design of a project, gets involved with coding efforts, conducts code reviews, and selects the technologies to be used. In other words, I am not talking about managerial rest and vest at the crest (further rhyming words elided) types of SAs. If I were to pursue any type of SA position I don't want to be away from coding. I might sacrifice some time to interface with clients and Business Analysts etc., but I am still technically involved and I'm not just aware of what's going on through meetings. With these points in mind, what should a SA bring to the table? Should they come in with a mentality of "laying down the law" (so to speak) and enforcing the usage of certain tools to fit "their way," i.e., coding guidelines, source control, patterns, UML documentation, etc.? Or should they specify initial direction and strategy then be laid back and jump in as needed to correct the ship's direction? Depending on the organization this might not work. An SA who relies on TFS to enforce everything may struggle to implement their plan at an employer that only uses StarTeam. Similarly, an SA needs to be flexible depending on the stage of the project. If it's a fresh project they have more choices, whereas they might have less for existing projects. Here are some SA stories I have experienced as a way of sharing some background in hopes that answers to my questions might also shed some light on these issues: I've worked with an SA who code reviewed literally every single line of code of the team. The SA would do this for not just our project but other projects in the organization (imagine the time spent on this). At first it was useful to enforce certain standards, but later it became crippling. FxCop was how the SA would find issues. Don't get me wrong, it was a good way to teach junior developers and force them to think of the consequences of their chosen approach, but for senior developers it was seen as somewhat draconian. One particular SA was against the use of a certain library, claiming it was slow. This forced us to write tons of code to achieve things differently while the other library would've saved us a lot of time. Fast forward to the last month of the project and the clients were complaining about performance. The only solution was to change certain functionality to use the originally ignored approach despite early warnings from the devs. By that point a lot of code was thrown out and not reusable, leading to overtime and stress. Sadly the estimates used for the project were based on the old approach which my project was forbidden from using so it wasn't an appropriate indicator for estimation. I would hear the PM say "we've done this before," when in reality they had not since we were using a new library and the devs working on it were not the same devs used on the old project. The SA who would enforce the usage of DTOs, DOs, BOs, Service layers and so on for all projects. New devs had to learn this architecture and the SA adamantly enforced usage guidelines. Exceptions to usage guidelines were made when it was absolutely difficult to follow the guidelines. The SA was grounded in their approach. Classes for DTOs and all CRUD operations were generated via CodeSmith and database schemas were another similar ball of wax. However, having used this setup everywhere, the SA was not open to new technologies such as LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework. I am not using this post as a platform for venting. There were positive and negative aspects to my experiences with the SA stories mentioned above. My questions boil down to: What should an SA bring to the table? How can they strike a balance in their decision making? Should one approach an SA job (as defined earlier) with the mentality that they must enforce certain ground rules? Anything else to consider? Thanks! I'm sure these job tasks are easily extended to people who are senior devs or technical leads, so feel free to answer at that capacity as well.

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  • Having a generic data type for a database table column, is it "good" practice?

    - by Yanick Rochon
    I'm working on a PHP project where some object (class member) may contain different data type. For example : class Property { private $_id; // (PK) private $_ref_id; // the object reference id (FK) private $_name; // the name of the property private $_type; // 'string', 'int', 'float(n,m)', 'datetime', etc. private $_data; // ... // ..snip.. public getters/setters } Now, I need to perform some persistence on these objects. Some properties may be a text data type, but nothing bigger than what a varchar may hold. Also, later on, I need to be able to perform searches and sorting. Is it a good practice to use a single database table for this (ie. is there a non negligible performance impact)? If it's "acceptable", then what could be the data type for the data column?

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