Using absolute paths with FTP
Obscure problem Ran into an annoying problem recently where an FTP account I was logging in with had a home directory of something like this: /dir0/dir1/dir3/Home To my dismay I needed to upload files...
Exception error codes
A practice I have engaged in for a long time now is adding error codes to any custom or handled exceptions that are thrown on purpose in anapplication. The purpose of these error codes is to act as an...
Biases in naming database objects
Introduction Over my whole software engineering career, I have watched and learned the right way and the wrong way to style and format code. Especially when it comes to naming objects. There has been ...
Using Gmail for SMTP access
Introduction When you search for this on google you will find one hundred million results that all pretty much say exactly the same thing. The problem is none of them are from a developer’s pers...
Offline installation of Microsoft Machine Learning server components SQL 2019 is stuck
Problem You are installing SQL Server 2019 and you get stuck at the Machine Learning Server Components installation step. Your installer could not download the files for whatever reason, it asks you t...
Enlarging a CHAR column
Scenario As usual when you don’t do something for a very long time, it is easy to forget what you knew already. I had to increase the column size of a CHAR field from 9 to 15 bytes and I totally...
Small date time is garbage and you should stop using it
Smalldatetime has been obsolete for a long time now get with the program A major pet peeve of mine is the smalldatetime datatype from SQL server. Not because it exists or it was what was available at ...
IIS application pool exploit
What? That’s what I said too when I first discovered the exploit. I didn’t think it was so easily possible to extract usernames and passwords from IIS, but it is. I contacted Microsoft abo...