F# infinite sequences can be used to continuously prompt for user input from the console. This is a good alternative to recursive functions.
Problem In trying to set up a virtual environment(virtualenv) for Python to be used in VSCode, I encountered a situation where I was unable to debug and hit the breakpoints in my code. My first steps were to verify that I was following the documentation for selecting the correct Python interpreter. When this did not …
The steps below were a result of figuring out how to install mssql-tools on aLinux instance. Along the way I learned a little about `yum` and repository priorities.
Goal After finishing my previous quick experiment with getting Docker up and running, I immediately wanted to experiment with SQL Server portability using Docker. The overal long term goal is to have standard docker images that all developers on the team could use for development and to assist with the onbording process of new developers …
Why learn Docker? For me, learning about containers (and Docker in particular) is just part of my journey to keep up to date on the tools of modern software development. I don’t anticipate becoming a container expert or managing large Docker swarms (although you never know!), but having a decent understanding of the tools and …
All these years using Windows and it is still so easy to learn something new! I recently came across an article (wish I still had the link) that mentioned how to quickly open a command prompt with the same working directory as the current folder in Windows Explorer. For so long I have used the …
Scenario Anyone who has ever connected to a remote system before has invariably encountered authentication or connection issues. Unfortunatly, due to the security implications of connecting to remote systems, the error message returned is not always helpful. For instance, I came across the message below when trying to connect to a remote SQL Server instance …
Using SSIS is a great way to perform ETL operations and bulk load or process data coming from multiple databases, especially if various database vendors are involved. However, setting up a full SSIS package just to do a quick query, import, or join is cumbersome and time consuming. Thankfully, setting up a Linked Server in …
Recently I was working on a project involving MySQL and needed to partition and rank results in a SELECT statement. This is a pretty straightforward approach in SQL Server using ROW_NUMBER() or RANK(). In my particular case I needed functionality equivalent to ROW_NUMBER() with partitioning by a single column and sorting by another. Below is …