blog
My blog of techy stuff, ranging around SQL (SQL Server, that is), C# and .net, JavaScript and a smattering of stuff about the Orchard CMS (that powers my site) as I get more familiar with it. There's the occasional non-technical post when something is of interest to me that I feel is worth sharing, but they should be few and far between
-
TIL: You can use column aliases in an ORDER BY clause
This is almost certainly something a lot of other people know, but I've somehow managed to not learn it in the many (many!) years of using SQL Server that I have under my belt...
You can use the …
-
Ignoring parameters that haven't been specified in a SQL query
I answered a question on Stackoverflow today that was looking to cater for having parameters to the query that aren't always required, i.e.
The report has three parameters, Sales Id, Start Date and …
-
2019: Time for even more
After a thoroughly action packed 2018 where I’ve learnt many different new technologies (AngularJS, Gulp and more) along with some more protocol-esque things (SWIFT, you and your MT103s and friends, …
-
End of 2018 link dump
Things I've had open in tabs to read, some of which may be of interest to you!
Nick Craver - Stack Overflow: How We Do Monitoring - 2018 Edition
Seriously, read it. There's a lot you can take away …
-
Using the Tabulator javascript library to prettify tables
There are more than a few different libraries out there which can be used to pretty up HTML tables in various different ways. One that I've recently spotted is Tabulator. In order to have a play …
-
Using the PSWindowsUpdate module to interrogate Windows Update
I've been looking at automating the patching of some servers that aren't domain joined, and one of the tools that I've spotted that may come in handy is the PSWindowsUpdate module. Once it's …
-
Setting up OpServer, the awesome monitoring solution from Stack Exchange
Monitoring. You know it's important, I know it's important, Everyone knows it's important, but,... it's often not given the focus that it so justly deserves.
If you're in a position where you don' …
-
Using SQL Server to generate ranges and group data into them
One of the reporting requests I see from time to time is to have output grouped into ranges, or bands if you prefer, e.g:
From
To
Quantity
Value
0
250
3
125.52
250
500
8
3, …
-
Conditional totals for groups of rows, based on the value of a given column, in SQL Server Reporting Services
SQL Server Reporting Services seems like a bit of a dark art at times (trying to look at the markup behind an RDL file definitely is!), for 90% of report based requirements it can be used to quickly …
-
Using Azure Traffic Manager to divert to a holding page for a site that's not available
In the first post in this series I put together a holding page that uses Azure Storage to write "call me back" details to Table Storage (so it doesn't rely on anything other than Azure), in the …