July 9th, 2007

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SQL Formatter

Our DBA writes some mean SQL code, I can write some SQL that works :). It’s not my strongest suit but certainly not my weakest so I handle most of my sql statements myself. However, when I need his help I cringe at sending him my sql code because he freaks when he sees it. To me SQL is a string variable, I use to not care how pretty the formatting is, what tab setting to use, when to carriage return a FROM and so on. Well, he cares and makes sure I know about it. I totally understand why but for me it was too time consuming to make sure I format something that in the end is a string variable…. Until I found SQLinForm. I am now a religious sql formatter, because not only does SQLinForm does it for me but it also creates c#, vb.net, php, and whole slew of other string variables. My SQL has never been prettier and I can finally ship sql to my dba.

Written by Tim on July 9th, 2007 with 1 comment.
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Google vs Microsoft Search

Is there really any doubt Google has Microsoft beat by 10 folds for search results? Here is a search I did on a Microsoft Great Plains error: “No TaxScheduleKey, but TaxAmount was passed in” Apparently Live.com doesn’t index Microsoft’s own newsgroups. Google does. Also Live.com the suggested alternative searches are based on the word “passed” which is a giant leap to assume my entire query revolves around 1 word. Google suggested TaxAmount as two words. I recently listened to Adam Bosworth MySQL speech in which he said how Google comes up with their “Did you mean” algorithm. It has nothing to do with a dictionary lookup, but instead looks at the past queries and what suggestions users ended up clicking when presented with choices for “Did you mean”. It really means Google is becoming a better search engine without any code changes, something Microsoft should take a qu from.