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Colin Bond is an information technology consultant specializing in information systems, database administration and data analysis. Areas of expertise include engineering data for the oil and gas industry as well as back office systems for the travel industry. He has over a decade of combined experience in the IT field.

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Commonly used apps

Posted on January 21, 2011 17:34 by cbond

Aside from the ubiquitous applications spotted on most business machines, I had a think about the additional tools and utilities I absolutely have to have on a machine that I'm using.  

The following represent that list.  Granted, there are specialized software packages that I have to have to do my job, but those will change company to company, industry to industry.  The list below represents applications that I would download whether I worked in Oil & Gas or as a analyst in an accounting company.

 

NameCostDescription
CC Cleaner Free CC Cleaner is a utility that helps you find and clean your registry, hard drive and generally tune up your machine.
Free Commander Free Free commander is an excellent file system utility. It allows you to have tabbed folders, view two folders at once and then some. It's draw back is working with FTP sites.
NotePad ++ Free Notepad ++ replaces the generic notepad.exe on every machine I own. It is an open source text editor governed by the GPL License. Some of the features I use it most for is realigning html and xml; coding vba, vbs, vb.net and comparing text files.
Synergy Free Synergy allows you to share your keyboard, mouse and clipboard across multiple computers on your network, regardless of platform.
SysInternals Free Microsoft's Sysinternals are a collection of tools and utilities that allow you to track and diagnose performance on your machine.
Camtasia Studio $ Camtasia costs money, but it is a great tool for filming your desktop and converting PowerPoint presentations into video.
Mindjet Mindmanager $ This is the best mindmapping software I've found. I use it daily to keep track of tasks, research, projects and on. It exports out to every conceivable format, too.

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Stored Procedures for Test Data

Posted on January 21, 2011 16:23 by cbond

If you find yourself routinely needing sample or test data sets to test queries against, it can be time consuming to have to regather the test data each time you need it. 

Tomaz Kastrun posted an article on SQL Server Magazine today describing this scenario.  His solution is a stored procedure that allows you to specify the source table for the data, how many rows and whether or not they're random.  The stored procedure then produces an INSERT INTO statement that you can use, or email/post for others to use.

The article is  "Transfer small amount of data by generating the INSERT INTO statement" and it includes the source code.  Alternatively I've copied the source code for the stored procedure onto my wiki: SQL - Stored Procedure - Generate Insert Statement

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SQL Tuning

Posted on January 20, 2011 11:47 by cbond

Quest Software's Kevin Kline posted this video on his blog titled "Magic Formula for SQL Query Tuning":

 

 

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LogiXML BI Webinar

Posted on January 20, 2011 11:44 by cbond

Here's an interesting BI webinar hosted by LogiXML:

http://www.logixml.com/resources/webinars/Agile_Webinar/Agile_Webinar_controller.swf 

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